The Shadows Suit Me
by Luke1
Summary: Events take unfortunate turns, and we are left with a Luke with no light left in him living in the underworld of Coruscant. But love, and the past, won't leave him be....
1. Prologue

I suppose there was a time when we were happy.

I remember it that way at least. Leia–well, who knows about her. All I know is that the light and dark seem to come in turns for me. And when the light has its day, then I'm happy. But the dark has stayed now far too long.

The sun is setting behind the towers of the Imperial Palace. It's winter, but it has been so dry lately that there is no snow on the rooftops or on the balcony where I sit, no frost clinging to the windows and walls. I suppose I should be wearing a jacket or something, but it doesn't matter. Not to anyone be me, at least, and if I'm the only one to care about me, then there's no point in taking care of myself. I watch as the lights turn on one by one in the Palace as people realize, blinking up from computer screens, data pads, and dinner, that night has all but fallen. I let the apartment behind me remain unlit. The shadows suit me.

In one of those rooms, though one of those lit windows in the Palace, there is a seven-year-old, blue-eyed boy called Anikin. For some reason, Leia still named him after my dream, even though I'd left. I don't understand. At least, I don't think I do. There's another, too. Dark-eyed, ten. Ben.

I put out my spice-stick in the ash-tray beside my chair. I can still see my breath, though it is no longer mixed with smoke. But I'm not cold, anymore, as I feel warmth from the spice tingle through my body. I close my eyes and lean my head back in my chair. It washes over me. And–almost half an hour later, but all too soon–it's gone.

Every time, I tell myself it's the last time. You feel empty after the high goes away, like having an orgasm alone. Sitting up, I listlessly regard the nearly-full ash-tray. Last time, indeed.

As if I would have been a good father, anyway.


	2. How it began

1I don't like to think about it, but I always do. That's what the spice, among other things, is for. To keep the daemons away.

I thought I'd known what scared was when, eighteen, I'd found Leia crying, curled into a little ball outside, at the party after the award ceremony at Yavin. She wouldn't tell me what was wrong, and like the good little boy I'd been, I took it on faith, and looked after her as best I could trying to make her feel better. She finally, days later, told me that she was pregnant. I was devastated–it meant that there was someone else, as it certainly wasn't me. But there wasn't anyone else. It was common knowledge among Rebels that Imperial Stormtroopers sometimes didn't see women for months, even years at a time, an as there was no code of conduct when dealing with a Rebel prisoner, it was no surprise that Leia had been mistreated the was she was.

However, it was such a surprise to her, that, aside from the initial crying, she didn't address the issue until she started to show. Then she finally told everyone. It was too late for an abortion.

I was loyal to her through all of it. I took care of her, doing little things like rubbing her tired back and bringing her lunch when, true to Leia fashion, she was too busy or preoccupied to remember to get food herself. And meanwhile, the crush I'd had on her since the first day I saw her–in that message that Artoo invaded my life with–became unfaltering, unquestioning love. I thought that she looked beautiful pregnant. She was luminous during the moments that she was able to forget the gravity of her situation, as well as the war, and pause to talk with me, joke, and feel her baby kick. Sometimes, after her work for the day was done, I'd go to her quarters. She'd cuddle with me and talk about the future in as positive a manor as she could. She was determined to make a good life for the two of them. And I'd be damned if I wasn't going to help her.

Han, in the rare moments that he was around–he couldn't quite make a commitment to this "idealism thing," nor could he stay away–would call the baby mine and Leia's, though he knew what had really happened. He just did it to rile me, to poke fun at how much time we spent together, at how worried I always was about her, but it put ideas into my head.

One night in Leia's room, I kissed her. I'd held out for as long as I could, but I knew that it was then or never. She kissed me back–oh, why did she kiss me back?–and I ended up spending the night. I asked her if I could be the baby's father, and she said, "I'd been counting on it."

We weren't even nineteen yet, but it made sense to me that if we were going to have a baby, we ought to get married. I didn't think that we had to or anything, I just thought that it would be best. And I wanted to marry her–so badly. I got home from a month-long scouting mission with Red Squadron and ran off to find Leia, who, I'd been told, was ordered my Mon Mothma herself to take a month or two off. She was asleep in her room, but woke up when I came in. She was eight months and so big that I couldn't believe my eyes, but I kissed her and gave her the Alderannian engagement brooch I'd found in a flea market on Sullust. She said yes.

Mon Mothma married us two weeks later, and Leia looked radiant in blue gown she'd had made, a gold circlet on her head. As of late she'd been tired and complained about being swollen, but that day...I will never get that image out of my mind. She looked like some combined goddess of beauty and fertility, her hair falling in ringlets about her face, her eyes bright, the folds of her vine-silk gown draping from her shoulders, falling loose and regal about her wrists, and accentuating the full curve of her stomach.

Our honeymoon was spent with the Alliance, but I was given a week off. The other pilots kept teasing me about being a married man, but I didn't mind. I had Leia Organa Skywalker to go home to–something I knew they all envied.

The baby was born before our honeymoon was over, almost two weeks early. It was the most stressful day of my life up to that point. But when I looked into Ben–Leia had consented to naming him for my mentor–Skywalker's dark, dark eyes for the first time, it didn't matter that I'd been up for thirty hours, or that our honeymoon got cut short, or that he wasn't really mine. What mattered was that I had a son every bit as beautiful and amazing as his mother. I couldn't believe how much I loved him.

"Luke," Leia said, waking from a soft dose on her meddward bed and turning to me, a few hours after Ben's birth, "I have to tell you something. Don't hate me."

Nothing could make me hate her, or Ben. She knew that.

"It wasn't a Stormtrooper, Luke. It was Vader."

Again, I thought I knew what scared was, but I promised her that it didn't change anything, save that now Vader had even more to answer for. Ben was mine now, after all.

Little did I know that it changed everything.

I shut my eyes against the memory, and a hot tear falls down my cheek. I wipe it away angrily. Clenching my teeth, I rush inside to the drawer in the kitchen where the spice-sticks are. Gone. Blast.

I slump against the wall, breathing deeply against the withdrawal that's already beginning. I'll take a shower, I think. A hot one. It'll warm me up and make my tense muscles relax. Then maybe I'll go to the cantina down the street–I can get more there. If I can't wait half an hour, then I have a bigger problem than I thought.

I go to the balcony once more and look towards the Palace. I suppose I worry about her still. I wonder if she's doing as badly as I am, but I don't think she is. She has the rare power to turn dark into light. I used to be good at that, too.

Besides, I know she tries to be strong for the kids. They don't know why I left. They never will.

I sigh and slide the door shut. Han takes care of them, I remind myself. He promised he would.

"Yeah," I murmur bitterly to myself. "I bet he takes real good care of them."


	3. At the cantina

1I have no idea how we did it, but Leia and I managed to care for Ben while hiding out with the Alliance. Honestly, we couldn't have done it without Han. Every time we were in battle or attacked, we could count on him to take one or both of us, with the baby, out of the way on the Falcon.

It was the happiest time of my life. Leia and I were married, so I no longer had to worry about where I stood with her, and it was before the rest of it started–my real problems.

Ben was such a joy. He looked just like her, so there was no reason for people to disbelieve that he was mine. In fact, I was even listed as his father on his birth certificate. When people would ask, as they often did, if we weren't a little young to be married with a baby, Leia would smile and shrug and say, "We fell in love."

The next two years passed in a heartbeat. Ben learned to walk and talk and sing cute little songs, and how to hide from me in an X-Wing hanger when it was the most inconvenient, and how to get candy out of "Uncle" Wedge, and how to pout to make "Uncle" Han forgive him if he drew on the walls on the Falcon. He was small for his age, but incredibly smart and beautiful, and everyone loved him, me and Leia most of all.

Ben doesn't know to this day that I'm not his father. I doubt he ever will.

I remind myself that it's all right to miss him. It's not his fault that he is what he is. It's not his fault that you and Leia were more to one another than you should have been, either.

I run a hand through my still-wet hair as I walk down the dark nether-street to the cantina. I go to this one because it's so sketchy that it's completely safe for me–no one knows who I am, besides my hook-up. I don't make friends anymore. They don't understand.

My hook-up sits in a dark corner, hooded. He's almost always here, and I wonder absently what, if anything, he does outside of pushing. But it doesn't matter. It's his business. He doesn't ask me why I use so much spice, and I don't ask him why he sells so much. It works out.

I'm aware of the fact that I'm scarcely recognizable as the boy hero of the Alliance, and that the beings who drink and smoke spice and play sabbic here are not likely to know me regardless, but all the same, I stick to the shadows as I cross the cantina. Not so much out of fear for my reputation–I don't even have one anymore. I just want to be left alone, that's all.

I don't use the Force anymore. I'm to afraid that the darkness could take me, and then what would I do? But still, sometimes, there will be a twinge of something in the back of my mind. It has to be something strong, though.

I feel him a fraction of a second too late, and see him even later. He's already seen me.

In a panic, I turn and run from the cantina, back into the endless night and in the direction of the turbolift to the surface. He's chasing after me, and I don't have to be Force-sensitive to know it. I know him.

"Luke!" he calls, but I keep running.

"Luke, damnit! I don't see you for seven years and you can't talk to me for a second?"

I stop, feeling slightly guilty but mostly annoyed. Now I'm not going to get the spice, I think. That, and the whole street probably knows who I am now.

I keep my back to him, but I hear his footsteps behind me. "Han," I say softly when he's caught up, "I don't want you to see me."

"Why not?"

"Things are...well, not going so great lately." I turn reluctantly to face him, and I know that he sees under the street lights the glassiness in my reddened eyes, all the weight I've lost, and how pale I am.

He frowns in concern and confusion. "What're you doin' to yourself?"

I force myself to smile, but I'm only doing it out of desperation. "Oh...I'm okay. It's nothing."

"You're not sick, are you?"

I shake my head, and neither of us says that we both know perfectly well what's going on.

"Hey, uh..." Han says, not knowing what to say or how to say it. "Ben's been askin' about you. Wants to know why he never sees you. I don't know what to tell him."

I don't answer, but look at Han pleadingly.

"Fine. Nevermind."

"I can't ever come back, Han. Not after...I can't forgive myself for what happened."

Han looks away sadly.

"Besides, she's your wife, now. And...with what's going on...I don't want my kids to see me this way."

He nods. He understands.

"I heard about...you and Leia. The baby on the way. Congratulations."

I suppose I mean it, but even I detect a little bitterness in my voice.

"Thanks," he says half-heartedly.

We're silent for a moment, and I look at him. He hasn't changed much. I loved him once, a long time ago, the way you love a brother, maybe even a father.

But that is all gone now. All that's left is a dull ache and tears forming slowly in the corners of my eyes.

"Buy you a drink?" he asks as a last resort.

It's so absurd I can't help but laugh. He smiles back at me. "That's good to hear," he says.

"Okay," I agree, and as soon as I say it, I regret it. But at the same time, I know that I'd needed to see him. I needed some affection from someone. He puts an arm around my slender shoulders and leads me back inside. I lean my head on his shoulder. He still smells the same.


	4. Coward

At some point I got paranoid about Han. I thought Leia looked at him with a longing in her eye, and that Han was returning it. I didn't have anything to worry about yet, and I suppose I intuitively knew that. But I was getting a taste of things to come.

The Battle of Hoth separated me from my small family. I went off to train with Yoda, and unbeknownst to me, Han and Leia, along with Ben, Chewie and Threepio, were stranded close to Hoth, limping along on sub-light. They were captured by the Empire and tortured at Bespin to draw me there. I came.

I fought Vader, all the more vehemently for what he had done to Leia, only to lose my right hand and left hanging on an antenna to die. But not before he told me the painful truth–he was my father.

Leia rescued me, and I saw, as she tended to my arm, the unconditional love in her eyes. I reasoned that if she could still love Ben in spite of what he was, then she could still love me. But the words came halting forth, and I didn't manage to tell her for a few days. I held Ben in my lap, trying not to muse on the thought that we were brothers, as a two-onebee tested my new hand. Ben was fascinated, and actually none the worse for his frightening experience.

Han was gone, something Leia and I both hurt for. But her more so, I think.

My hand finished, I shooed Ben off to play with the droids in the next room. Leia was staring absently out the window of the Alliance medical frigate. We were far from the galaxy's center, and from here the view of the disk was gorgeous. She was more so.

"Leia," I said, softly, not daring touch her incase she took the news badly. "I have to tell you something."

And somehow, I told her.

Her eyes grew wide and tearful, but she didn't shrink away. She laughed sadly. "Interesting family we have."

I nodded.

"Luke...I have something to tell you, too. I'm pregnant."

We hadn't exactly been trying, but while on Hoth we'd been toying with the idea of having another baby if things started to look up for the Alliance. They most certainly weren't.

"And there's more," she continued. "I'm not sure it's yours."

I took a step back, angry and feeling betrayed. "You slept with Han." It wasn't a question.

She didn't lie to me. I'll give her that.

I left the room. I didn't see Leia for a few weeks.

------

Somehow I end up sitting back in the cantina with my former best friend. He buys me several glasses of ale, and after the first three or four, I don't really miss the spice.

Han puts on a ridiculous show of friendship, but I can tell it's just because he's nervous. I sit and drink the ale quietly. I can't deal with things anymore. I let substances do it for me.

"Hey, kid," Han begins, drunk. He must have been drinking before I got here, because he's had less than me now, and is twice as drunk. "You know I left one of the best sabbac hands of my life to run out into the freezin' cold after you?"

I raise an eyebrow septically. He's bragging. It's just to build himself up–it doesn't even matter if it's true or not, which it probably isn't. That's not the point. "Really?" I ask, and I honestly couldn't care less.

I see the light in his eyes waver as he's talking to me. He calls me "kid," as if I were still some naive child like the purity-obsessed farmboy I once was. As if he still loved me. But I see through the mask. What he's really thinking is that I'm killing myself, dimming the light that used to shine from me. He's also feeling guilty for not taking care of me himself, as if he could have done anything.

I know because I know him, and I know when there's more going on that meets the eye. He betrays himself in the slightest movements of his hands, the anxious glances he throws at me.

A mixture between nerve-wracked and bored, I down the rest of my fifth glass and decide to be done with the charade. I stand, a little dizzy, but I am more than experienced at holding my alcohol. "Look, Han," I say softly, "I don't want to see you because it brings back bad memories. And I know you don't want to see me, because of how scared you're acting. I'm going home. We don't have to keep this up any longer." I put on my leather flight-style jacket and turn to go.

He rises and grabs my shoulders, forcing me to face him. I'm too weak and drunk to resist. "Luke, I do want to see you," he says, and I feel like a chastised child. He tries to make eye contact, but all I can think about when I see those hurt hazel eyes is the fact that Leia looks into them every day. I turn my head.

"Please let go," I all but whimper. He does, slowly. He frowns at me, as if unsure what to make of me.

"Han..." I begin carefully, unsure if I can trust him. "The dealer in the corner."

He looks to my hook-up, still waiting in the back of the cantina. "Yeah?"

I swallow. "I was going to...but I don't want you to be here when I do."

He nods. I think he understands why I would be ashamed–for someone who knew me when I had it together, to see me so broken now....

"I'll go," he says, and for me it almost sounds like forgiveness. I shut my eyes, holding in the memory of his love and friendship that suddenly comes back when I hear that tone in his voice, unwilling to let myself feel it. I don't want to start feeling the old things again–that would make the pain even worse than it already is.

"Thank you," I murmur.

He reaches out for me one last time and squeezes my shoulder, firmly but carefully. I look up into his eyes at last, steadily, remembering that it was the way we used to say good-bye instead of a hug, a handshake, or even words. We went deeper than that. I put a gloved hand on his and squeeze back.

"Don't tell Leia...how fucked up I am," I request with an ironic laugh.

Han flinches to hear me use that word, and I remember that he has probably never heard me curse. I was so innocent, once. I blush, barely, something I don't do as often these days. "I won't," he promises.

I nod.

He takes a last look at me, sorrow in his eyes. "Go easy on it," he says, and I know he means the spice. Without waiting for an answer, he turns to go, without the usual swagger in his step. I watch him until he disappears from sight.

I count to ten in my head slowly, the pusher in the corner waiting for me. I want the spice so badly, but maybe I'm drunk enough to forget it tonight. And then tomorrow, maybe I'll be brave enough to wait out the whole day without it, and then the worst of the withdrawal will be over. And if I can make it past that point, maybe I can get off it, and deal with my problems the way I should have been all along.

I grit my teeth. Suddenly, I wonder what it's like for Han to come home to her, and my kids. I can't imagine what she must look like now, so I see her twenty-one and barely pregnant, dressed in Alliance-issue fatigues and one of my old shirts, her hair in a messy braid crown. The thought of Leia as I last saw her reminds me that the spice is what makes the memories go away. I know I can't wait–I'm not that strong anymore. There was a time when I anxiously ran off to face every danger, just to have it over with. But that Luke Skywalker died seven years ago. I'm not brave anymore.


	5. Morning After

Readers--Thank you so much for the reviews. The wowewsad factor was more or less what I was going for. I noticed that a few of you are the same who read Not Ready more than a year ago--I'm still planning on finishing that story, just to let you know. Please enjoy chapter 5!

Chapter 5

I forgave her. I couldn't not. I couldn't pretend that the betrayal I felt in any way altered the love that I would always feel for her. After steering clear of her for almost a month, I had to talk to her. I had to tell her how I felt.

I was away on a mission with Rogue Squadron, which I now had command of, and I called her on a voice-only subspace channel on board my X-Wing. She didn't want to speak to me at first, and I don't blame her for being angry at me–I had taken off without a word to her or even Ben–and it tore me apart to hear her cry. I told her hastily, so that she would hear me out, that I loved her no matter what, and I'd like to come home to her and Ben if she would let me. It didn't matter to me whose baby it was. Ben wasn't mine, either, after all.

"And...if you love him, and you want a...divorce," I said softly, the words grating in my throat, "Then I understand. We'll find him, and you two can be together."

She didn't answer right away, and later she told me that she had been struck speechless that I would make these sacrifices so that she could be happy. "I don't love him," she said at last. "We need to get him back for his own sake, not mine. It was just a lapse in both of our judgements, Luke–not love. And...by the way...I had a test done. It's yours. And it's a boy."

I closed my eyes tightly, thanking all of the stars in the sky silently. Though I already had Ben, and I'd thought I'd known what joy was when I first held him in my arms, somehow knowing that this life was one that Leia and I created together made me happy beyond description, beyond feeling almost. He was mine. My son.

-----

I wake up to a headache, nausea, a strange surreal feeling, and a general bad mood. "I shouldn't have smoked so much," I say to myself, "Especially after drinking."

But seeing Han and having all of those things brought to the surface had made me panic. I all but overdosed with how much spice I took last night, and I bought more than usual to begin with. I wonder, getting up from bed carefully, if it's finally time to admit to myself that I have a problem, and not only the psychological kind.

I brush it off and go to the kitchen to make come caf and toast–my hangover breakfast. I skip the milk in the caf and only put butter on the toast, trying to keep it simple so that my nausea doesn't get worse. I sit on the couch to eat–my apartment doesn't really have a lot of furniture–and glance out the balcony's glass door. By the light it looks past noon. No wonder, as I stayed up almost until dawn, torturing myself with memories.

After the toast is gone, I sit sipping my caf thoughtfully. I hear the Palace's chrono chime at some half-hour mark. I sigh.

After I'm awake and feeling better, I suddenly realize that the place is kind of messy, and for the first time in a long time that bothers me. More strange, I actually feel active enough to want to do something about it. I start cleaning up–hanging up my black clothes, thrown about the apartment; emptying out ash-trays; even doing dishes. I start thinking that maybe today won't be so bad–after all, I'm safe where I am, and I don't have to let any of the old things in if they don't want to find me.

Then my comm beeps.

I sigh in desperation and curse. It's probably nothing, but my relative peace is interrupted.

I hit the comm button on the wall. "What?" I ask–I have no reason to be polite.

"Kid?"

I hit my head lightly on the wall, cursing again silently. "How'd you get my comm signal number?"

"I asked the...the guy at the cantina."

Han doesn't say who the "guy" was, so I'm suddenly aware–and it frightens me terribly–that someone else is listening.

"Han..." I ask, trembling, "Is Leia there?"

After hesitating a long time she says, "Hello, Luke."

I hear her voice for the first time in seven years. It knocks the breath out of me, and I have to sit down on the couch. I breathe deeply, trying not to hyperventilate, my head in my hands. Oh, gods....

A moment passes, and Han asks, "You there, Luke?"

I nod to myself, slowly. "I'm here. Why are you two calling me?"

Another pause. They–or at least Leia–are as nervous as I am. "Luke, where have you been?" she asks.

I sigh in desperation and scan the room for spice-sticks. I must have left them in my bedroom last night. Great–if I made a run for them, they'd know. "Here and there," I answer, and I sound annoyed even to myself. I hope she doesn't hear the tremor in my voice.

Pause. When she answers, her voice is trembling, too, but as if she's on the verge of tears. "'Here and there?' Luke, you just abandoned me and Ben, and I was PREGNANT–"

I stand, unable to believe that she would be angry with me. "Exactly! With MY child!" I shout. "I was scared to death of what had happened between us, after finding out...and I don't think you can sit there and tell me you weren't, either!"

Pause. I calm down, feeling guilty for yelling at her. I find a box of cig-sticks, the legal kind of spice sticks, on the caf table under some other things, and light one. They won't give me the high, but they'll clam me a little and give me something to do.

"You could have at least kept in touch with Ben...and made some attempt to know Anikin."

I blow out some smoke thoughtfully. "Why'd you name him that, Leia?" I ask softly.

"Because of what you said, about wanting to make peace with him–so did I."

"I killed him, you know," I say, disregarding her sensitivity completely.

She is silent for longer this time. "I know. But I still had to make my peace."

I don't answer. I just watch the stick burn down.

"Ben has been asking about you a lot lately, Luke. He remembers you, and he's at the age when he starts wondering where he came from–"

I smile ironically. "Then tell him, Leia," I say jeeringly. "Tell him how he was created."

Shocked silence from the comm. "Luke?"

I shake my head. "Leia, stay away from me. There's nothing in my life now but anger, hurt, and a lot of drugs." I wasn't going to tell her about the drugs at first, but if it would keep her away from me, then it would keep her away from me. "I don't want to hurt you or the kids."

She's really crying now. I can hear her. "It's a little late for that."

She cuts the connection off, and I feel, at first, very satisfied for making her cry. Then the memories of what she meant to me come flooding back, and the satisfaction turns into pain. I pull my knees up to my forehead and push back tears.

So much for cleaning up the apartment, I think.


	6. Another Skywalker

Things were almost okay again, for a while. The war was escalating, and with Leia pregnant, that really worried me. I also couldn't deny that I'd lost some amount of trust in her. But we were back together, Leia and Ben and I. So everything was, in essence, perfect.

Though maybe not, because I think perfect never existed in our family, and it certainly hadn't since I'd found than Ben and I were brothers and that Han wasn't really a friend at all.

Ben was ecstatic at the prospect of having a little brother. He talked to Leia's stomach and made up nonsensical names and said, "That's what we're going to name our baby." He was painfully cute. I didn't know how something so angelic could come from something so evil. But I suppose that's the story of my life.

Things weren't the same between Leia and I anymore, though I would have given anything for them to be, especially with a baby on the way. My love for her never diminished, but neither of us really knew the other anymore. We were both scared.

We got Han back from Boba Fett with Lando's help within three months of his being taken. Leia avoided him, and he understood, I think. I wasn't speaking to him, either, but out of hurt. He apologized, and I said I forgave him. But I still don't think I really have.

I went back to Dagoba only to watch Yoda die. That was bad enough, but as he slipped away, he whispered, "Luke, there is another Skywalker...."

I was puzzled, but then I reasoned with myself, probably out of the inexplicable fear that was rising inside of me, that he must mean Ben. Ben really was a Skywalker–I hadn't told Yoda that Vader had sired him, and Yoda might not know who his visions or whatever were referring to. Of course he meant Ben. He had to.

I went outside and sat on a log, mourning Yoda and trying to push away the foreboding feeling that refused to go away. I sensed something ominous, something my psyche told me I'd been sensing for years. It wasn't Ben that Yoda meant. Someone else. Someone I knew. It started to rain.

"What am I going to do now?" I wondered out loud.

As an answer to my prayers, and also akin to an angel of death, Obi-Wan appeared to me. We talked for some time, and at last, trembling, I mentioned Yoda's last words.

"I should have told you when you met her, Luke," he said carefully, with a slight sigh. "But you would have had more questions then, and I would have told you about your parents, which you weren't ready for. Besides, you were happy, and doing more good for her and Ben than harm...."

Oh, Gods....

I don't remember what happened next. I was in shock. I know I asked the horrible question, "Leia?"

"Your twin sister."

He tried to explain why we had to be separated, why I had to be hidden on Tatooine while Leia stayed with her–our–mother, but I hardly listened. After a few moments of this, I stood and lashed out at Obi-Wan. "So what if I wasn't ready?!" I yelled. "Gods, Ben! You should have told me! She's pregnant. You know that?! Now what the fuck am I going to do?" It was the first time I'd cursed, the first time I let may hate make me powerful, though I didn't do any physical harm.

"I'm sorry, Luke," he said.

I glared at him, to angry to cry. "I don't ever what to see you again, Ben. And I'm NOT a Jedi anymore."

----

I never did see him again.

I feel a little guilty for not continuing the tradition of the Jedi, but whenever I touch the Force, I'm reminded of my teacher, and all that he could have prevented. The Jedi turned me into what I am. They turned my father into what he was, as well, and if it wasn't for what he did to Leia, I probably never would have married her.

I've disconnected my comm temporarily. I don't want to talk to Han or Leia, not at least until I get my bearings, figure out what to say to them. I don't want to yell at her like last time, but it's so satisfying–which is why I have to be on my guard. I remind myself that it's not her fault that everything happened the way it did. She's the last one I should blame. But she's the one who brings out parts of me that shouldn't exist. Anger, hate, fear–and love. I was supposed to be a beacon of light, the last resort of an extinct religion, but we all messed up.

After three days, I think about reconnecting my comm. I need to talk to her. It's about time I did.


	7. My father's son

It was only my lingering shock that allowed me to return to the Alliance and my family. My mind was operating on auto-pilot; I knew not what I did. There was a subconscious part of me that was like a homing beacon for Leia, so I found my way home.

I locked myself in spare pilot quarters on an Alliance command ship. I hardly had a thought in my mind that I can recall–I wasn't brooding or sulking. I all knew is that I couldn't face my wife and son. If I told them at all, it could not be yet.

A few days later I woke from my shock to realize that I had to do _something_. Now I'm not sure I would have told Leia anything, where I was going, why I was leaving, or the truth of our parentage, simply left without a word. But then there was still some trace of the idealistic farm boy left in me, and that boy was loyal to the woman he loved regardless of what he now knew her to be.

Unbelieving my own boldness, I sought out Leia in the rooms she, Ben, and I once shared. Ben ran into my arms when he saw me. I held him tightly–it was never his fault, his concern, what he was, nor was it mine. Ben was a mistake that hadn't been my fault, unlike the others, and I think that it was that fact that let me feel for him up until the moment I left. I never regretted the love I feel for him.

I asked Ben to go to his room. Leia stood in the doorway, and by her eyes I knew she felt the coming storm as surely as I had on Degoba. Crouched on the floor where I'd been holding Ben, I anxiously avoided her glance but tried to look at her nonetheless, frightened, repulsed, and fascinated by her curving body, disgusted at myself for having done the same thing to her as my father had.

I rose timidly, looking away from her questioning face. "Where have you been?" she asked, accusing, frightened. "You docked three days ago and you haven't even called–"

"You don't understand," I said quickly, angry at her for being angry with me. I brushed past her into our room, sat on our bed with a sigh. She watched me, puzzled, with a hand on her stomach. She was wearing one of my shirts, I noticed grimly. It's got to be too late for her to get rid of the baby–the abomination–if she already can't fit into her own shirts, I tought.

"Sit down," I ordered her softly.

She sat beside me, silent.

"I have to leave, Leia," I near-whispered.

"Again?"

I didn't answer.

"Why? Where are you going?"

I gathered my courage. "I have to find Vader."

Nothing but shocked silence from her.

"It's the only way to end all this. I have to kill him."

I knew there was only thing that could compete with Ben for most important thing to Leia, and that was seeing Vader dead–not a day went by that she didn't dream of killing him for all he'd done to her and the rest of the galaxy. She didn't rejoice at my words, however. She knew there was more. "Why now, all of a sudden?"

I took a deep breath. "I found something out while I was on Degoba."

She reached for my hand, to comfort me, but being reminded of our love only made me angry. I drew away sharply and rose. "Don't touch me," I snarled. "Don't ever touch me again! You don't understand!"

"Maybe I'd understand if you would explain it to me, Luke!" she snapped in return, desperate.

I folded my arms across my chest, and I knew I wanted to hurt her. I wanted to hurt her the way it hurt me to find out Vader was my father, and Leia had slept with Han, and the way Obi-Wan had hurt me by not telling me the truth. It would be easy to hurt her. And I wanted at first to hit her, but I knew it would hurt more to use words, to tell her the truth in the least gentile way I could think of.

"Let me tell you a story, Leia," I said, finally looking her in the eye. "Once upon a time there was a woman from Alderaan of noble birth. She was raped by a dark lord of the Sith and got pregnant–"

"Luke..." she whimpered, shocked. Never since Ben's birth had we spoken of his true origin. "Why are you doing this?"

"I'm not talking about you, Leia. I'm talking about your mother, Padme."

She blinked. "My mother...?"

"You thought Bail Organa was your father, just as Ben thinks I'm his. It's too bad you didn't know sooner, that Vader didn't know. Not that it would have changed Vader's mind when he had his way with you. You probably look like your mother–it enticed him."

"Luke...what are you saying?"

"We were created from darkness, Leia, you and I. From hate and fear...." I draw nearer to her. "And lust. That night when Vader raped Padme, she conceived twins. Have you ever wondered about our birthdays, Leia? Six days apart. Six days. That's how long it takes to get from Alderaan to Tatooine. They must have called the day they brought me there my birthday...."

She blinked and a tear rolled down her cheek. I never told her directly. We never spoke of the truth directly. It just existed somewhere in the air between us, there but invisible, real but intangible.

"Why are you telling me this?" She pleaded. "Why are you doing this to me? It's not true."

"It is. You know it is. You've always known–so have I. And so what we've become is as evil as our conception."

She drew a shuddering breath.

"That's why I have to kill him, don't you see? He began this. He turned to the darkside, created us, created Ben, which led to me marring you...and the innumerable evils he's done to the galaxy in general. He has to die."

Leia trembled. She looked sick and frightened, and so very small and helpless. "Don't go," she begged.

"Why?" I laughed bitterly. "You'd have me stay here with you and our inbred children? To what end? We have no future, Leia."

"I...." She glanced at her pregnant stomach as if seeing it for the first time, suddenly very afraid of the child within. "I don't want you to go. You'll be killed...or worse."

"No." I shook my head. "'Worse' has already happened. It's too late."

"Luke...I don't claim to understand the Force as well as you do, but isn't revenge of the darkside? If you kill him, won't you become like him? You can't risk that."

I could feel the dark power in me already, the surge that I got from my anger toward Obi-Wan and from causing Leia pain. It was intoxicating, amazing. "It's too late for that, too. I'm my father's son. I know that now."

She sat quietly for a long moment. I turned to go.

"Wait," she stopped me. "You...love me. Don't you?

I clenched my teeth. I didn't want to be reminded. "I...I did...."

"Then, maybe...Vader loved o–my mother once, too." I heard her stop herself from calling Padme our mother. "He wasn't always Vader."

"No. He wasn't. But he is, now. And he's done enough damage for one lifetime." I turned to go again, but she called me back a final time.

"Luke–"

I turned back.

"What was his name, before he was Vader?"

I hesitated. "Anikin Skywalker."

She nodded. "Maybe Anikin's still in there somewhere."

"Maybe Anikin and Vader aren't as separate as you seem to think!" I snapped. "I'm not exactly all hopes and dreams anymore, either."

She refused to recoil at me anger, and simply pleaded, "Don't go, Luke."

She said it so softly, yet so firmly, so sincerely, that for a moment the anger and the memory of the past week left me, and I wanted to stay with all of my heart. "I...I have to go," I said at last, no longer so sure. I turned to leave, but came back one final time to give her a quick kiss.

I left, and I haven't seen her and Ben since.


	8. Silence is my Sanctuary

That last kiss had puzzled and haunted me since that night. I keep wondering why I went back. I was terrified of what have happened between us, and I was nauseated by the thought of all we'd been to one another, but I still came back to kiss her good-bye, like lovers do at a parting, as if the reason for my leaving had been of usual consequence. Why?

I know the answer perfectly well, and the answer scares me more than where I came from or anything I've done in my life, much more than my dark and uncertain future. The answer is the reason I never could see Leia again, as well as the cause for me reconnecting my comm, wanting, suddenly, to speak to her.

Five days since I heard her voice for the first time in seven years, two days since I reconnected my comm, she still hasn't called. Pacing my apartment anxiously, like a wild animal in a cage, I smoke all but the last of my spice, trembling in anticipation. I decide to call her myself–I can take this wondering and waiting no longer. There are so many things that need to be said. I must make her understand that I did not leave her out of malice or spite. I owe her that much–an explanation beyond the angry and confused farewell I slapped her with before abandoning her. I owe her at least that much.

I call the Imperial Palace in a daze, unbelieving my own bravery and incitive–it is no longer in my character to do anything of the sort–and ask to be connected to President Organa-Solo's private line. The refuse promptly, as I knew they would, for security reasons. "Please," I say, trying to sound legitimate and desperate at once, "She'll want to talk to me. This is her ex-husband, Commander Luke Skywalker."

It's been forever since I've heard a title before my name, and it sounds strange even to me. But the comm operator believes me and requests an answer from Leia. I wait.

"Luke?" Her voice comes like a question that one will not like the answer to, but also like happy tears, like a sunshower.

My own voice trembles, and I resolve, for the time being, to be civil, to not make her cry this time. "Hi...Leia...."

After a stunned silence, during which the comm operator disconnects her own line, Leia speaks, reproachfulness in her tone, as well as some irony. "Why are you calling me? I thought you wanted me to stay away from you."

I did, didn't I? It's probably for the best that she does, too–we can't do anything anymore except hurt each other. Why had I called? "I...I wanted to say I was sorry."

"For what?" She won't be taking any nonsense from me; that I can tell. I had been sincere in my lame attempt at an apology, but she doesn't know it. She does know, however, as well as I do, that I can play with her emotions like a human taunts a cabbit with a piece of string. But that awareness gives her an advantage, and she'll have none of my games this time. "For yelling at me the other day, or for...walking out on me?"

But if I can taunt her, she can infuriate me. I shake my head to myself, biting my tongue against the anger that rises so easily. "You know perfectly well that I had to leave, Leia."

Her voice changes, becoming again the hopeful voice of the girl she'd been, but the accusations are still in her tone. "We could have dealt with it together, Luke. I needed help getting through it all–the shock, the anger, not to mention the war and my pregnancy. We could have helped each other. You gave up."

"I know." I do. It seems to be the only thing I can ever trust myself to do since I left her. I light a spice-stick against the fading high. "I know I did. But there are times when there's nothing else you can do. Fate was always against us. So I said fuck fate and–"

"Hid. You hid, Luke."

I don't answer. My silence is my sanctuary.

"You could have at least had the decency to file our divorce in person," she adds, her intent to stab me back.

"I couldn't see you," I reply sullenly. "I thought you'd understand."

"I understood. But I still think it was cold. And imagine trying to explain it all to Ben. If Han hadn't been with us, I don't know what I would have–"

"Han," I interrupt her bitterly. "Right. Speaking of cold, Leia, how long after our divorce was official did you wait until you agreed to marry Han? Was it the same day or did you wait a whole week–"

She snaps, "Did you call to apologize, or to do more damage?"

I swallow, leaning back on the couch. "It hurt me, Leia," I say softly.

She matches my tone. "I know."

Neither of us speak for a long, deep moment. I almost, out of uncomfort, tell her that I should go. But I don't. That would somehow take more strength than I have at the moment. Instead, I ask, "How are you, Leia?" I need to know, need to make sure that she isn't as I am, while a darker part of me almost hopes that she's unhappy so that she can share my fate.

"I...." She hesitates, as if wondering herself. "I _was_ fine until Han told me he'd seen you. I'm...I'm expecting a baby."

"I know. I read about it." I hear the scorn in my voice, and I know that congratulations, in way of making up for it, will sound too false, so instead I ask, "When are you due?"

"In about two months. Oh-six, twenty-four."

"Right near Ben's birthday, then."

She pauses before answering, perhaps surprised by my remembering. "Yes."

There is something I'd always almost wanted to know, almost not. Something that I'd never endeavored to find out, but something makes me ask it now. "When's Anikin's birthday?"

She pauses again, thrown by my seeming concern over the son I'd never met. "Ten, fifteen."

I don't answer. There's nothing to say.

She sounds so sorrowful when she adds, "He looks a lot like you."

"I know...I've seen his picture." Indeed I have, in holos and at the newsstand–images of Leia, Han, and my boys, together. I turn away from my son's accusing blue eyes every time, eyes that seem to know so much, to see down to my very soul. I've thought about buying one of the holos of one event or another to watch him, to see if he acts as angelic and strangely wise as he looks, or if the look in his eyes is an illusion, and that maybe deep down he is as twisted as his origin. I don't want to ask her, but I have to know. "Is he...is he okay?"

"What?"

"I mean...because you and I are...."

"Oh!" She understands suddenly, answers the question in a hurry, no more wanting to talk about it than I do. "Oh. Yes. He's fine. He and Ben are both completely normal. They're smart and healthy. You'd never know."

I sigh with relief. "Good." My hand trembles as I hold the spice stick and I put it in the ashtray before I have a chance to drop it. I clasp my hands tightly together and press them between my knees, willing the shivering to stop. But it's not the drugs this time–it's nerves.

"Luke...?"

She hesitates at first, as if she knows she is asking too much, and that her favor will not be granted. "Ben...found out that Han saw you. He won't stop talking about you. He can't understand why you won't se him."

I shake my head frantically, though she cannot see, panicking. "No. No way. I'm_ not_ the kind of person you want around your children, Leia."

Her way with words is evident as she understates my situation. "I know you're having some...problems. But if you could just stop by...."

"No. No...I couldn't. I can't ever come back–"

"Then why did you call me?"

I take a deep breath, agreeing silently that it seems like a plea for attention. I don't know what had possessed me to do it. It was just one of those times that if you didn't act you'd die of sheer anticipation. But there is more, and I know it. I say, before I fully realize what the words mean, "I...I just had to hear your voice." I blink, thrown by my own sincerity, and I feel a part of my soul momentarily warm, a part that had been dead since I left her.

After either a shocked or touched pause, she says, gently, "Do you need anything, Luke? Are you okay?"

I smile at the absurdity of the question, and perhaps a little at her concern. "No...I'm not okay. But I don't need anything."

"Promise me you'll think about visiting Ben. You don't have to promise to come, but please don't say no. Not until you've had time to think about it. It would mean so much to him."

I remember being ten, hating my uncle and dreaming of a perfect father that didn't exist. I would have given my soul to spend one hour with my father no matter if he was perfect or not, just because it was he. I could give Ben an hour, I could put my past aside for an hour. It wouldn't be easy, but it _would_ mean a lot to him, and that I could relate to. Besides, my solitude wasn't getting any easier, and the move I'd made in calling Leia, I knew now, was maybe one small part of a bigger leap of faith I would have to make. I was to the point that I either had to make peace, or I might as well kill myself now, because that was where I was heading. I was deceptively easy, suddenly, to say yes after hiding so long. "I'll come," I say, still unsure, adding, "If you think it's a good idea."


	9. Ben

As I walk to the Palace this afternoon, I'm beginning to think that it wasn't a good idea. I can't function in conversations, I can't deal with the past, and I certainly cannot act what Han, Leia, and Ben would describe as "myself." Certainly not without some help. Though I desperately want to see my...family?...sober, looking tallow and week, unable to focus, isn't going to help anything. I smoke spice as I walk to the Palace–not as discreetly as I probably should, but I've never been ticketed for it. It's colder than it's been, but it's snowing for the first time this winter, as if the sky has been holding its breath for fear and now feels safe enough to breathe again. It's almost a relief to me, somehow, to feel the white powder melting into my hair, though I've always been uncomfortable with cold weather. It feels right, this time.

My hair is sufficiently damp and the spice put away when I reach the immense building. Leia's told her various guards, posted at doors along my way, that I would be coming. They let me pass with snappy "Good afternoon, Commander"s and salutes, as if I were still a war hero. I don't know weather to laugh or shake my head in disgust. How utterly absurd.

I reach her door, an ornate double door, and I push her presence away, refusing to feel it. I remember the way, when we were married, she was always there, I could always sense her. It wasn't something I wanted to remember. Not now, especially. This was going to be hard enough as it was, and it is only the thought of my promise to Ben that gives me the courage–after I shake the snow from my hair and take a deep breath–to hit the buzzer.

Half of the door swishes aside, and there she is. I thought the sight of her would make me want to cower in fear or feel nauseous like it did the time I said good-bye. But somehow, it doesn't. She's radiantly beautiful, and her smile puts me at relative ease. "Hello, Luke."

I smile cautiously in return, as if I'm not sure that it's allowed.

She reaches for me as she might reach for a fellow dignitary, and I can see that she wants to hug me, and after so long doesn't know how to do it but formally. I let her for reasons beyond me, and I even return it, holding her as if I'll never let go, finally pulling away when I realize my slip of emotions.

I look her over curiously. She's rounder than she was during the war, resembling more the puppy-fat child princess she was when we met than the thin, over-stressed mother and soldier that she became. Her hair, braided, woven among strings of pearls and rose-colored silk cord, falls over her shoulder, reaching past her very pregnant stomach. She wears a rich velvet gown of the same color as the cord in her hair, with a vague golden undertone, bringing out her pale but somehow at once rosy and golden complexion beautifully. She is, for the first time I have seen her since perhaps our wedding, dressed in a manor becoming her high birth and exalted office. I wonder dimly if a life with me, poor, depressive sometime-farmboy, would have ever seen her so dressed again, as if somehow I had been the cause of her choosing uniforms over gowns during the war. But that's ridiculous.

"Hi," I manage at last, sheepishly. Not knowing what to say, I offer, because it's more true than it's ever been, and I want her to know, "You look well."

She smiles and thanks me, but doesn't return it–we both know it's not true of myself. "You cut all your hair off."

"Oh...." I shake the last bit of damp from the dark blond–that looks darker the shorter I cut it–little-more-than-fuzz on my head. Feeling I need to explain myself, I ramble, "Yeah. A while ago. It just wasn't me anymore, with the bangs and everything. I looked too young."

"You are young," she reminds me, as if she knows that I need reminding that I'm not even thirty yet. Continuing to look me over, she says, playing my mother hen as she used to, "Stars, Luke–you're so thin. Don't you eat?"

As she turns into the grand apartment, one I feel strange for entering for numerous reasons, I murmur, "Not a lot."

"Have you had lunch?" she calls from somewhere inside, and I step in reluctantly, seeking her out. The floors are marble and vast; the walls, painted a faint peach-ish white, reach far over-head, ending in a curved ceiling decorated in moldings. The decor is simple, obviously changed from the time of Palpitine's reign, but the finery, as well as the fact that I'm actually _in_ Leia's apartment after all this time, makes me plenty uncomfortable. I feel unworthy of her hospitality, and too nervous to eat, so, fighting down a blush, I reply, "I'm okay...."

She reappears at a doorway at the end of the entrance-hall, through which I can see nothing but her and the sky through a window behind her. How bright it is here compared to my little, dark apartment. She rubs her round stomach with one hand in gesture, pleading, "Luke, I get hungry every ten minutes and I don't want to eat alone. Please?"

I glance at a crystal and dark wood chrono on the wall–Ben won't be home from school for twenty minutes. I don't know what else I'd do with Leia for that stretch of time, so I agree.

Once we're sitting side by side on barstools at the kitchenette counter, eating sandwiches and drinking caff–Leia's decaff–it suddenly doesn't seem so difficult. I can tell she's trying to act very casual and friendly with me, and I appreciate the gesture, because it succeeds in putting me more at ease. I wonder absently if there could be hope of us ever being friends again, but I know that I'm not capable of such a thing. I'll never be able to stop thinking of what has been.

She tells me about Ben and Anikin's school exploits. I try not to act too interested, perhaps because I don't_ want_ to be interested. But I am. Very. From what she tells me, they both do very well grades-wise, but Ben gets into a lot of trouble conduct-wise. I'm sure she sees me start at that, fearing the darkness that he and I have both inherited from one I don't like to think about, because she quickly adds that he doesn't fight or have trouble getting along with the other children. He just doesn't follow rules very well. Anikin, on the other hand, is a perfect angel–quiet and sweet, and the most intelligent child his teachers have encountered. So intelligent, at times, it scares people–he seems to know things that he has no way of knowing. But it's no bother to her. She loves him very much.

I hoped that Leia's promise would hold true, and that Anikin wouldn't be home until a hour or two after Ben, at which time I would be gone. I didn't want to meet the boy. I was afraid of seeing too much of myself in his eyes.

"Why is he staying at school late?" I ask curiously.

She smiles, as if greatly amused and swallows a bite of sandwich before answering. "He's in a play."

I blink. Perhaps he wasn't so very like me, after all. "My son's in a play?" I ask in disbelief and some measure of awe. "My son has the courage and public speaking skills to be in a play? This is _Anikin_ we're talking about, right?"

Leia laughs out loud. "Yes. He didn't exactly inherit your bashfulness."

Though I wouldn't use that word to describe the insecurity that had plagued me as a child, I'm grateful that he not have to go through that. "Well...good." And as Leia laughs again, I suddenly see the humor of the situation and laugh with her.

Her laughter is like the sunshine, and laughing with her is like basking in it, and I suddenly realize anew how beautiful she is. She makes me remember being a boy, being eighteen and full of hope and happiness, and the breath catches in my throat. I stand in a panic, refusing to feel things for her, or at all. She frightens me terribly, the way I'd assumed she would when I arrived at the door. I feel sick suddenly, and the left cargo pocket of my pants feels heavy with the spice box I keep there. I need it so badly...but not now, I tell myself. Wait at least an hour. You can do that.

"What's wrong?" she asks, concerned.

"Nothing," I lie. I push the spice craving out of my mind in frustration. Changing my mind, I sit again tiredly, fishing the box out of my pocket and handing it to her. Something makes me need to tell her.

There is distrust and something of fear in her eyes as she weighs me, then the little sliver box, with them. Opening it, she blinks in surprise and understanding. "Oh," she breaths, as if disappointed. But she knew. I told her, a week ago. Maybe she didn't believe me, or didn't want to. But that can't make it untrue.

"The withdrawal starts sooner all the time. It's already coming." I'm not sure if I'm trying to scare her or not. It's fun to scare her, easy, makes me feel powerful...but I think I just need her to know the truth.

Frowning in concern, she turns glassy eyes to me. "You're _addicted_ to death sticks?"

I blink, then understand. I shake my head. "They don't call them that anymore."

"That doesn't matter," she snaps. I don't blame her for being angry. "I didn't know it was this bad. I told myself it couldn't be.... Luke, you need help."

I'm tired if hearing that. I'm tired of hearing it from my landlord, from the doctors at Medcenter, from everyone. I know it's probably true, but I don't want to hear it anymore. They think that by telling me I have a problem, they'll make it go away, or make me suddenly realize that I've been a drug addict for however many years, and make me suddenly want the help I'd never seek otherwise. It makes them feel better, I think. As if it absolves them of fault. What doesn't occur to them is that they _have_ no fault. It's my doing, my business, and they need take no blame nor supply advice. I can handle it myself. I shake my head stubbornly. "I don't want any help."

She tilts her head as if that will help her see through me. "Then why did you show them to me?"

I take the box back and slip it into my pocket. "You have a right to know what's going on."

She holds my gaze for a long moment, trying to get me to admit that I want her help. But I don't. At last she looks away and asks, business-like, "I can trust you not to say anything about it to Ben, can't I?"

It hadn't occurred to me. "Of course...I'd never...."

She cuts me off as I search for words. "Thank you." She looks worriedly into my eyes for a moment. I want to look away, but I don't. I also want to hold her, but I don't do that, either. I just look at her. "This isn't like you," she says, disappointed.

I shake my head slowly. "No. You don't know me anymore, Leia. It all too much like me now."

"How did this happen?"

I shrug. I'm not really sure, myself. "It...it was alcohol at first, after I left. I tried different things to make me forget, and...this is the one that...well, worked best."

She swallows, brow furrowed in uncertainty; I notice fine worry-lines on her forehead and around her eyes that weren't there last I saw her. "Please be careful," she begs.

"I am." I'll say anything to get that frightened look out of her eyes, even if it's not true.

I think she'll do anything to make me feel better, too. She smiles for me, a smile I know is only out of desperation, and reaches for my hand. Unsure why I would trust her so, I give it to her, gently infolding hers. Maybe I just need to feel the warmth tingling up from her palm. Maybe it's more. There's feeling in her touch, emotion. It's been years since I've allowed myself to feel any emotions but desolation, fear, hurt, sadness...because when I feel good things, it always reminds me of her. For once, I open myself to it, and it seems to stab at my soul, but I hold onto it for a moment, that feeling. Unwittingly, I also reach for her presence in the Force, needing it to come washing over me the way that it used to, the way nothing else ever could. But as soon as I touch the Force I retreat from it, burned. I cower from it, as well as her, as I draw my hand away.

She looks at me questioningly, and I have to look away from those huge, dark eyes. How am I supposed to answer her unspoken thought? I could never explain myself to her. That is not what I came here to do.

Breaking the silence, the double door in the entrance hall swishes open and a child's quick, light footfalls echo across the marble floors and off of the high ceilings. A still high voice calls, as the footfalls draw nearer, "Mom! Is he here?"

It still sounds like him. His voice has changed drastically, but it still sounds like him. I realize as he nears that I'm very nervous to see him, but not afraid. I _want_ to see him. Suddenly, I want it more than I've ever wanted anything in my life. He bursts into the greatroom and smiles brilliantly at me, his huge brown eyes, just like his mother's, twinkling. He still looks just like her, tiny and pale with glossy brown hair cut straight across his forehead. His smile is so joyous and innocent that I can't help but smile back. I try to say hello, but I find my throat to be too tight with emotion to utter a single word.

His smile broadens as he looks at me, perhaps remembering me, finding the caring boy of a father I'd been somewhere in my changed face. "Hi, Dad."

He called me "Dad." I don't know what I'd been expecting, but it's been so long, and I'd thought that maybe he'd be resentful, or at least unfamiliar enough that he wouldn't call me by the same title he once had. But he did. Dad. I will my voice to work, and I'm able to manage, "Hey."

He stands there a moment, not knowing what to do or say. I realize I'm still sitting, and as we're both at a loss of what to do next, then maybe I should act like an adult for once and go to the child. I rise and walk to him, kneeling to less his height, and he throws his arms around my neck without hesitating. I remember this–as a smaller child he nearly tackled me with his hugs. Taken aback for a moment, my fear slowly melts into love as his own becomes evident to me, even after all this time, after I left him as little more than a baby. This feeling doesn't hurt, doesn't frighten me. The boy is innocent, as he had been at three when I hugged him hello before saying goodbye forever. And he loves me back. There can be nothing wrong with this. I hold him tightly.

"Missed you, Dad," he whispers. There's no mistaking Han's Corellian accent's influence on his speech, but his honesty reminds me of myself at his age when I'd still been a little shooting star twinkling with hope and promise. Hold onto it, Ben, I think.

"I missed you, too," I breathe, marveling at my ability to open up to him. It's true. Not a day has gone by that I haven't thought about him, wished that I could be with him. He's the only thing I've ever loved in my life that I haven't felt guilty about later.

I pull away. He's on the brink of the time when one is no longer a child, though not quite a teenager, though not there yet–he is still distinctly a child. A tooth is missing on the side of his mouth, perhaps the last one he'll lose, and when he smiles I can see its replacement growing in. Thanks to Leia, he's very well groomed, his hair neatly trimmed and his emerald-green tunic pressed. He's a little chubby, as I imagine Leia had been at his age. He's absolutely gorgeous. Almost wanting to cry with happiness, I say, though I know it's a very cliché line, "You're all grown up."

"I'll be eleven in two months," he brags, blushing slightly.

I laugh softly. "I know. Eleven, huh? That's a pretty big deal."

"Why?"

I shrug. "It's just a good age to be, that's all. It's a fun age to be." He makes me feel at ease, myself, eighteen, happy. He's the first person that's been able to do that in far too long.

I notice Han standing in the doorway to the front hall, arms crossed. Of course–he must have picked Ben up from school. I offer him a half-smile and a soft hello, and he returns it in much the same way. "How you doin'?" he asks, and I'm not sure if it's meant as a pleasantry or not.

"Okay," I lie, though seeing Ben has made me feel much better. "You?"

He nods. That doesn't mean anything. "Thanks for coming. Means a lot to Ben."

I nod.

He doesn't go to kiss Leia or even say hello. All he says to her is, "I'll make dinner after I pick up Anikin."

She nods, not really looking at him.

Han retreats into a hallway leading away from the greatroom. I watch him go, not sure what to make of what just took place.

"Are you staying for dinner?" asks Ben excitedly, unfazed, unnoticing, or simply used to Han and Leia's seeming indifference towards one another.

I almost want to say yes, but I shake my head. I'm not staying that long.

"Maybe another time, Ben," Leia offers helpfully, rising, stretching her back. "Your Dad has to go in a little while, but he'll come back."

Well, I certainly haven't agreed to that, but I'm thankful to her all the same. I seem to have forgotten how to talk to children.

"Okay," Ben says sadly. "Dad?"

"Yeah?"

"Mom says you're the best pilot she ever met."

"Well...." What do you say to that? "I haven't flown in a really long time. But I used to be good, I guess. I...I commanded Rogue Squadron."

"Yeah, I know," he chimes in excitedly. "And I have these flight sims that are really hard, but Mom and Han both say I'm doing really well for my age, but I was wondering if you could maybe help me with them? Just for a little while?"

I smile. At least this will make the time go quickly by, maybe even without giving me a chance to need spice or get scared of all that's happened today. "Sure," I say. "I can do that."


	10. Anikin

I sit with Ben in his room for about an hour, half hesitantly talking to him, half helping him with the flight-sims that he could nearly play with his eyes closed, anyway. He's much more than "pretty good for his age." He's amazing. If there's one thing, anything, that I can say of my family in admiration, it's that we make some amazing pilots.

"I want to be in Rogue Squadron when I grow up–like you were," he says from his seat on the floor, smiling up at me as I look over the beautiful model starships he's made, displayed on his dresser.

I smile back, bemused. To think that _anyone_ would want to be _anything_ like me. But he's too young to see what I really am–he sees me though eyes clouded by love and half-remembered heroics I'd preformed when he was little. "You could be," I say proudly, and it's true. I wouldn't be surprised if Wedge'd take him now, eleven or no. "But make sure it's what you want before you join. War's terrible–it does things to you...."

"Is that why you left?" he asks curiously, no trace of reproach in his voice. "So that you didn't have to fight with the Alliance anymore?"

I blink. It had never occurred to me that someone might think that the reason. The mind of a child.... "No. Well, I don't think I would have fought after the Revolution was over, even if I _had_ stayed, but...that isn't why I left." I don't want to talk about it, but I feel guilty for not having a better answer.

Ben cringes as the hologram before him pauses and reddens, three-dimensional letters flashing "mission failed." "I died," he informs me, annoyed. "Can you help me get past the asteroid field part?"

I nod. He offers me the controls, and I take them, sitting beside him on the floor. The game begins again. This is an old one, one I'd played as a kid, and all of the moves are still in my muscle memory. I could play this in my sleep.

"Why _did_ you leave, Dad?" he asks, as I knew he would sooner or later. The boy's too smart to let me just brush it off.

I sigh. Telling him the truth is, of course, out of the question, but what lie will be truthful enough to not sound like a lie to eleven-year-old ears? "It's kind of complicated," is my stalling answer, but I know he won't by that either.

"I'll understand," he assures me.

No, you won't. "I'm sure you would, but I'm not sure how to explain it to you. Things between your mother and me."

"Did you fall out of love?" he asks. Perhaps he has school friends with separated parents, whose children swallow blindly that reason for their divorce.

"Not really," I answer. "It just wasn't working, I guess. She was in love with Han, and she and I weren't getting along, and...it was better this way." Come to think of it, falling out of love _does_ sound more convincing.

"You still love her then?" How can he ask that as if the answer doesn't matter to him?

I blink again, startled. "I don't know," is the only answer I can manage.

"But you loved her when you had me, right?"

I smile. "Ben! Of course."

He doesn't say anything as he watches me maneuver the sim around asteroids. Then, "Was I an accident?"

I sigh in exasperation. Did I have to address everything today? "Ben," I say as a parent will when their child is bothering them. I still remember that part of being a dad.

"Okay, okay," he says, sitting back some.

But I have some questions, too. During the last few minutes of the "asteroids part," I ask, "What do you think of Han?"

Ben shrugs. "He's nice."

That's all?

He smiles up at me again. "But he's not you."

The part of my soul that warmed when Leia held my hand flutters briefly, and I smile back. "Does he take care of you?"

"I mostly take care of myself now," he informs me ostentatiously.

"I know," I say, stifling a smile. "But you know what I mean. Is he...."

"A good Dad?"

"I guess that's what I mean."

Ben shrugs again. "Yeah. I mean, he is."

"You like him?"

He nods.

I think about Han and Leia's interaction in the other room. "Is he good to Mom? Do they get along?"

"They fight a lot," he says offhandedly.

"They always have."

"It's more lately. They always seem mad at each other. Han sleeps in the guestroom a lot."

"But they're going to have a baby–"

"Yeah. I dunno."

"Are you glad you're going to have another little brother or sister?"

He nods as if he doesn't mind the idea. "It's a sister."

I smile slightly, thinking that Leia will like to have a daughter. "I'm past the asteroids. You want to do it again?"

He nods again and accepts the controller from me.

I glance at Ben's little alarmchrono by his bed. Oh, Sith.

"I have to go, Ben," I say, and it breaks my heart, but only after I say it, as if by putting it out there it makes it true.

He sighs sadly, pausing the simulation. "Okay," he says begrudgingly, standing. "I'll walk you out."

I rise and he takes my hand. I can't help but smile at him. Everything he does is so sweet.

Leia is sitting on the couch in the greatroom reading over some paperwork, eating a piece of fruit. She looks up as I enter. "Are you leaving?" she asks. I know she'd want me to stay and see Anikin but I haven't agreed to that, and she understands that I have to take small steps.

"Yeah, I should. I...you know...."

She nods, pushing the paperwork off her lap and onto the couch. She rises. "Did you have fun, Ben?"

"Yeah. Dad helped me get past the asteroids." He runs off for some reason, into the front hall.

She smiles. "He's been trying to get past that for at least a week. Han couldn't do it. Well, he didn't try very long, but...." she trails off as if disappointed.

I shrug. "It was easy. He'll get it. He's really good." I don't meet her eyes.

"Thank you," she says softly, leaning closer to me. "I think he needed to see you. He talks about you all the time."

I sigh, not knowing what to say or feel. I'm flattered and swelling with pride, but I can't help but think that his admiration is misplaced. But I wouldn't let him down. He needs his dreams. "It was fun. He's...quite a kid." I do look into her eyes, now, letting her know I mean through her own doing.

Her smile broadens, but I see something sad behind it. "Thank you again, for coming. I know it was hard for you. It wasn't easy for me, either."

I look into her eyes suddenly. I didn't know. "Wasn't so bad."

She reaches for my hand and squeezes it. "Keep in touch with him. And so I know you're all right."

I nod, drawing my hand away uncomfortably.

"Dad! Come see Anikin!"

Fuck. Oh, fuck.

Ben had called from the front hall, and in my absorption in Leia, I hadn't heard the door open. The boy probably doesn't understand that seeing a son I've never met would make me nervous, frightened. He wants to show Anikin to me as he showed me pictures he'd drawn as a toddler. I look at Leia in alarm. She looks startled as well, but shakes her head, as if to say, "I don't know."

"I don't want to...I can't..." I breathe in a panic.

Leia takes me by the arm. "You can and you have to. Aren't you curious? He's your own flesh and blood, Luke."

I swallow. "That's what I'm scared of."

"You can do it. He exists whether you want him to or not. And it's time you met him. Besides, he's not scary. I promise. He's beautiful."

Because I see no other way out of it, I trust her. I can't very well go out a window and there's no other door. Besides, knowing he's right there, after all this time–I _am_ curious.

Ben runs into the greatroom excitedly, his huge missing-tooth smile radiant. In hand he has a blond boy, tiny for seven, staring with scared blue eyes up at his...his parents, I realize. This is not only the first time he's seen his father, it's also the first time he's seen the two of us standing together, as if we were still a unit.

"Anikin, this is our dad," says Ben, as if showing another picture he's drawn.

I swallow hard. The boy looks at least as frightened as I am, and I'm not sure if that makes me feel better or worse. He does look just like me...cuter, maybe. He looks something like his mother, but seems only to have her general attractiveness without any of her features. I feel a little like I did when I saw Leia's pregnant form the day I said goodbye to her, appalled at what I'd created. But at the same time, I don't think I have ever seen anything so beautiful in my life–more than Ben, more even than Leia. He's mine. He's my son. He's mine and Leia's son.

"Say hello, Anikin," Leia requests, and her voice trembles as if she's holding back tears.

"Hello," the boy says shyly in a sweet little voice, hiding partially behind Ben.

"Hello," I return.

Han walks in from the front hall, obviously surprised to see me still here. "Want a ride home?" he asks.

I look up. It takes longer to process what he said than it should. "Oh...no, that's okay. It's not that far."

He nods. He and Leia don't say anything to one another, again.

I kneel before Anikin to get a better look at him. He shrinks away, but not far. "I have to go," I explain. "But I'll come see you again, if you want."

"Maybe," he says quietly.

That's good enough for me.

I put on my leather jacket, and I don't know if I want to run home and hide in my room and get really high and calm down from today's events or stay here with my boys for just a little while longer.

I don't know if I'll want to come back, but I do know that I don't regret today.

Leia smiles at me in thanks again as I duck out the door. It stabs me again. For now, I let it.


	11. Darkness is Safe

Darkness is safe. Leia's apartment is beautiful and bright, but I feel exposed there, and one never knows what will happen, who will find you, in the light. And then, the light dictates, you will have to deal with it in a kind, honest, civilized manor.

The dark is primeval. Nothing is required and nothing can find you if you don't want it to. Here, in my dark and much tinier apartment, no one can touch me, no one can surprise me, and nothing can scare me. Nothing but myself, anyway. I can close the window shades–I'm too poor to have dimmers on my transparasteal windows–and light a stick and be alone, as I'm accustomed.

Bright and beautiful may be nice, but in the dark, I'm me.

I almost don't know if that's good or bad, that reclusive and angry makes me who I am–but I know it makes me comfortable, as it's all I've know for years.

I don't eat dinner tonight. I usually don't. I sit on my bed smoking as the sun sets, unseen through my window shades, and I think about things. Surprising to me, I don't dwell on the distant past, but only on this afternoon. I think about mine and Ben's time together, about how I think that maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to have an actual relationship with him. I doubt I will with Anikin, at least not at this point in my life, but the memory of him haunts me–his sad, innocent blue eyes. Though I'd only seen him for a moment, I dwell on him most of all. Leia was right. He wasn't scary. No, he was plenty scary, but his perfectness outweighed it.

I also wonder about Han and Leia. I've almost hated Han since Leia slept with him that first time, and more since he married her. I suppose I feel that he betrayed me, my friendship, by even being interested in my wife, and I think I'm justified in that. But when they married almost two years since I'd seen either of them, I had fantasies about avenging myself on him. I never actually would have acted, of course, but I wanted to. I have no idea what happened between them after I left, and I know there's a chance I should be grateful to Han for taking care of her during a very difficult time. But I'm not. I hate him.

But I love him, too, of course, and that's the real problem. He's still my big brother, the man that saved my life a handful of times, taught me to swim, taught me to fight hand-to-hand, helped me get up the nerve to flirt with Leia back when she'd been pregnant with Ben.

He has a lot of nerve.

I can't help but wonder about what Leia told me on the day I found that Anikin was mine, after all: "It was just a lapse in both or judgements, Luke–not love." And now? She doesn't act like she loves him, and he doesn't act like he loves her, either. But maybe Ben was right. Maybe they were just fighting.

Somehow, the thought of their marriage failing satisfies me. Han deserves to go through losing her the way I did.

And I realize, as I often do, how very, very jealous I am of him.

I light another spice stick, angry at myself for admitting it. It's almost a deal I made with myself, that there are some things I don't feel, some things I don't think about, some things I don't admit to myself. I must, absolutely must, not feel some things for Leia.

Feeling depressed again, I go to sleep early.


	12. Running Away and Returning Home

I'd always intended for him to take care of her after I left. I suppose I knew that something would happen between them, but I still didn't want it to. As I was preparing to leave my life with Leia and the Alliance behind, my feelings were so confused and mixed that I had my drive to leave and not much else. All at once, I needed to be free of my past, but at the same time, I had to give it a parting gesture. I said goodbye to Leia. I thought about going to say goodbye to Han, but I couldn't–I was still angry at him. And what was I supposed to say?

I didn't pack bags. I didn't tell anyone besides Leia that I was going. I left Artoo and my X-wing. I left a message of formal resignation for Alliance command because, just incase I survived my confrontation with Vader, I didn't want to face a court marshal. I cut off my hair–I couldn't say why, exactly, except that it is tradition on many worlds to cut ones hair in mourning, and that perhaps I was in mourning for the Jedi and child I'd been. I knew I'd changed, and that the change had been coming ever so slowly since I left Tatooine, accelerated four months ago when I'd confronted Vader, and was now almost complete. I didn't know my own reflection as I inspected the job I'd done, a pile long wisps of fine dark blond hair on the bathroom counter before me. This man was not Luke Skywalker. Luke Skywalker had bright eyes, and a tan, and too-long, messy hair, and a smile, wore a commander's uniform. The man in the mirror had dull grey-blue eyes and scars across his face from a fairly recent Wampa battle, looked pale and wan, lost, all in black. I was in very good shape from training with Yoda, but I still looked unhealthy. Because my muscle tone couldn't disguise the sick soul within. And I knew it. I almost welcomed it, just to stop fighting. Yes, the darkness would take me. That was inevitable at this point, I knew. But it didn't mean victory for the Empire. Or the Jedi. I wasn't playing their game anymore. This battle would be fought on my terms.

I couldn't eat for fear of nausea whenever I thought about her. I couldn't sleep for fear that I would dream myself in her arms, dreams which caused me to awake in fits of panic and hatred of a mind that could still subconsciously long for her after what I'd learned. Even then, I wouldn't let myself think the word _incest_, and I can't to this day. After cutting my hair off and trying to sleep, I knew that I would simply have to be on my way, and have it done. I was so afraid, but it was time.

Han. I had to say something to him, to let him know that I was leaving for a reason. One way or another, he had to know why. I thought maliciously that perhaps knowing every detail of our fucked-up family might give him pause when moving in on my territory after I left, maybe repel him enough to keep him away. But that was not the point. The point was, that he was part of this, too, like it or not. He slept with Leia, he claimed friendship to both of us, and he'd always been like an uncle to Ben. He had to carry the burden, too. And he had to understand.

Partly in cowardice, partly out of need to put my thoughts in order, I left him a note on his bunk on the _Falcon,_ in my messy script, in a fury before I tore myself away from this life forever. I tried to write neatly at first, knowing that he often complained about not being able to read my handwriting, but something began to poses me as I wrote it all down–some things that he had no need to know, things that I couldn't tell Leia, feelings and thoughts and wishes. It was because, regardless of what had happened between him and Leia, I knew that I could trust him with my thoughts and confidence. Not with my wife, but somehow with my soul.

I never talked to him about the scribbled, tear-stained farewell note. I can scarcely believe I had the courage to even leave it for him, so passionate it was. But I had to do it. I closed with:

_I know all of this doesn't quite make any sense, and I guess it's partly my fault–I didn't try to write this all that clearly. But try to understand why I'm gone, as I will be by the time you read this. If I live, I'll let you and Leia know somehow, but I don't want to see either of you again. I'm sorry–forgive me. This is what I have to do. Take care of her and Ben...and the new one. Don't tell Ben or my son any of this, I beg you. And don't dwell on me, especially when you talk to them. It would be better if I was forgotten, as all of this–you, Leia, Ben, the Alliance, the Jedi–will be to me in time. I'm not the boy you knew–understand that. There's nothing left inside me to miss._

_Just promise me that you'll take care of her._

–_Luke_

After I'd stopped crying, and left the letter, written on at least ten pieces of flimsy, folded on his bed, I stopped to wonder if I really did want him to take care of her. I wanted to know she was safe, though at the same time I didn't want her to be. But if another man was going to have Leia, then it should be Han.

I brought no baggage aboard the pint-size Alliance transport I stole, at least not in the physical sense. I had the clothes on my back, and my lightsaber. That was all. Now, even those are gone. But non-physical past doesn't get left behind so easily. I don't know what I'd expected after the confrontation if I lived, but I suppose I'd hoped that I could start over. Three months later, I found that a new apartment and clothes didn't help, but a bottle of rum did somewhat. But in hyperspace on the shuttle, rushing off to intercept the _Executer_, I was optimistic in comparison. I wasn't _going_ to survive. And if I did, Luke Skywalker wasn't going to exist anymore. It turned out to be a lot harder than that.

I don't know why I have trouble saying no to Han, but last night when he called and asked me to pick up the boys from school today, I said yes. I wanted to say no–gods know I did–but it was either the soft tone in his voice or the memory of the light in Anikin's eyes that made me consent. It's been almost a week since I've seen either of them, or had any contact with their parents. When Han called, his first question was, "Where ya been?" as if he expects me to suddenly be able to be part of their lives again after how long I've tried to forget everything about it. It's not as easy as that, Han.

I'm as sober as I get, walking to the Imperial Palace. The night after I saw my boys...and Leia...was hard. Very. And the only way I know how to deal with hard situations is to push them into the oblivion of spice. But the next morning I awoke with the resolve to try, for their sake, to cut back. I'm not helping anything with this, after all, if the very things I'm trying to forget are part of my life again. I'm only hurting them. So today I've only had two sticks, and it's already almost sundown. That's the best I've done in months. I can feel the signs of withdrawal coming, but it's not too bad yet, and I fight it.

Parents stand in the outdoor play-yard waiting for their children. I stand among them, anxious around the big group of people. My first thought in groups is always, "Will they recognize me?" But they don't. I'm sure the occasional person does, but brushes it off, with a "he probably only looks like him" sort of sentiment. I pull the collar of my coat up, blocking out the winter wind as well as blocking much of my face from view, stuffing my gloved hands into my pockets. Winter on Corruscant is so cold, it almost makes me long for Tatooine. Almost.

The kids' school's entrance sits on the south wall of the Palace, the yard on one of the massive ramparts that wind around the building. It's intended as a school for the children of those living in the Palace, those involved in the new government centered there. I'm supposed to pick up both boys–Han didn't say why, but Anikin doesn't have play practice today–and take them home, play with them and make them dinner, and generally hang around until Han and Leia get back from a senate meeting. Apparently, my function in this family is babysitter. I sigh, thinking it wasn't fair for me to dismiss it like that. There are plenty of people Han and Leia could have asked to babysit, but they asked me because naturally a father and his sons would want to spend time together. And they know I need an excuse as a little nudge. This ought to be fun–I can hardly take care of myself, and somehow I have to cook for and look after a ten- and seven-year-old for three and a half hours. I'm supposed to call Chewbacca if anything goes wrong, or if I need any help, but I won't be doing that. I haven't seen Chewie in seven years and that's bound to be an awkward interaction. I'll just have to manage on my own.

The kids start to pour out of the double doors, most of them under six, born in the first months of peace after the Revolution's end. Ben isn't the only older child, but the others belong to people who became involved with the Republic after the war, because no one in their right mind would have had a child during the war–I think rather ironically–except an ill-fated princess and her lover, an overly idealistic farmboy. Ben spots me across the yard and breaks from his class' line in excitement, almost dropping his school bag as he runs into my arms. We hold each other tight for a long moment and I wonder, as I feel his soft, dark hair against my cheek, how he could be so blind to the fact that I'm not the father that he remembers, that I'm not much of a father at all, anymore. I'm sure as hell going to do my best tonight, though. I set down some rules for myself for the night: no spice until I get home–I can hold out; no sulking or thinking about the past–in other words, try to let go of everything not Ben and Anikin; and, lastly, make an attempt to interact with Anikin. The sooner I do it, the easier it will be.

Anikin comes walking across the yard with a friend, a dark-haired girl about his own age, laughing and talking. I ask Ben the girl's name. "Tamin Antillies," he answers.

"Antillies? Is...is Wedge her father?"

Ben nods.

Well, that came out of nowhere. Wedge hadn't been involved with anyone when I left, and now a beautiful auburn-haired young woman is picking up their daughter from school. I almost want to go introduce myself to the girl and her mother, ask how Wedge is...but it's too much. Maybe someday, but not today. It's too hard. "Do any of the other kids belong to people I know?"

"Lando has a little boy. But he doesn't live on planet. He's annoying, anyway. A lot of the other kid's moms and dads are Republic pilots like you were."

Anikin says goodbye to Tamin and approaches me timidly. He takes Ben's hand and doesn't meet my eyes. It doesn't bother me–it's almost comforting that I'm not the only one who's apprehensive about tonight–Ben sure isn't. He looks up at last and gives me a tiny smile before looking away. I know I need to say something, but what? Anikin, I'm at least as scared of you as you are of me. Anikin, I'm sorry I left your mother to have you on her own. Anikin, I know I never can make up for the past seven years, but I'll try. Anikin, you weren't supposed to happen, but I think I might love you anyway....

"How was school?" I ask.


	13. The Power of Kids

Chapter 13

I remember thinking rather innocently during the Revolution that Ben was the only thing that kept me going sometimes. Sometimes when my squadron lost pilots, or we had to rush for our lives to another base, or when the Empire won yet another battle, my own hopes and dreams were hardly enough to get me to wake up in the morning, and the thought of saving Leia for the good of the Galaxy almost seemed a vain effort. Ben, however, reminded me that, no matter what, these worlds I fought above had a future, had countless children on them, human and otherwise, and if I ever won this war…I would win it for them. Ben brought that reaction out in many who encountered him. Han called it "the power of kids."

Ben hasn't lost that power, I think. Anikin has it, too.

We're alone in the Organa-Solo apartment, and I know that I should be encouraging the boys to do their homework, but when I think of the universe as a whole, time racing ahead, unfathomable and abstract to we mortals, unstoppable, speeding faster and faster and youth and peace slipping away into the cooling ashes of dying stars…how important _is_ homework, anyway? Besides, I never did my homework when I was their age—nagging them would be hypocritical. At least, these are the excuses I give myself for playing flight sims and wrestling with my boys, thus neglecting my responsibilities as a "babysitter."

Anikin's a little stand-offish, still. He murmurs a few words from time to time, hesitantly piloting the virtual ships as well as Ben does though nearly four years younger, blue eyes staring intensely at the hologram before them. This is a boy who sees everything. I'm sure he notices the problems between Han and Leia far better than his brother does; maybe—I think with an unsettled feeling—even sees me for what I am. Maybe…maybe it's not only good eyes and keen observation skills…maybe he's Force sensitive. When I was a child, I was tuned to the Force naturally, which ebbed away as I grew older, and I had to learn again. Ben is—I know that. I don't think he knows anything about it, but as I was learning to listen to the Force during the Revolution, I became more and more aware of my step-son's power, but somehow it did not occur to me until later, soon before I left, that something had to be done about it, one way or another. And the way I chose for Ben was never to mention to him and his mother the potential that he had—has—for fear that he would become like our father. Like I did.

I don't like touching the Force, and if I'm high I can't anyway—drugs dim the Force sense. But I have to know about Anikin. I open up to it, and it's like opening one's eyes after having them closed a long while, like turning on the light when one wakes up. It hurts, and I ease into it carefully, pointing my senses at Anikin.

And then I haven't only turned on the light, I'm staring straight at the glowpanel, being blinded.

I stifle a gasp and turn my awareness back off.

Oh my…fucking stars….

I have _never_ sensed anything like that before. It's as if, in the eyes of the Force, the boy is made of light. So amazingly powerful…and so pristine.

But how can that be? We're lucky he isn't somehow miss-developed, even luckier that he's smart and strong as well, beautiful, even. But even if he _is_ genetically and developmentally sound—perfect—shouldn't his Force-presence be cursed for the way he was created? Shouldn't he feel wrong, dirty, dark?

But he's perfect in every way I can comprehend, every way I'm capable of seeing.

And his power…the sheer magnitude of it. I'll have to keep an eye on him, gently restrain him if he starts to use it. With that much potential, he could be another, worse, Vader.

Why is my son so blessed? So damned?

I shake my head in wonder as Anikin, with s great deal of difficulty, but in one try, gets past the infamous "asteroids part." Ben exclaims in exasperation, "How'd you do that?"

But I know how. This is a problem.

There will be plenty of time to dwell on that later, I suppose. For now, Ben tackles me from the back of the living room couch and I flip him gently onto his back. He laughs, and I laugh back. This is it—"the power of kids." In a way, I've almost been ill since that night on Degoba, or perhaps since Bespin, but even people with terminal illnesses—real ones—feel better when they laugh, when kids are around. Something inside me is waking up, and I wonder if the darkness I've shrouded myself in was not to cover up or hide from the light—maybe the darkness was just an absence of light, of love. Maybe to heal, I didn't need to keep running or trying to forget the past. Maybe the emptiness simply needs to be filled.

My train of thought, which was becoming profound enough to lose myself in, derails suddenly when Anikin drops the holo-controller and tackles me as his brother had. I gasp. This is the first time he's touched me, and the closest I've ever come to touching him was when I'd tried in vain to feel him move, hand on Leia's belly, early in her pregnancy. For a minute I freeze, startled, but then I flip him carefully onto the floor, too, and he giggles an amazing, sweet little laugh, and I see my own smile on his face. I sigh happily.

The boys wear me out completely—I'm not nearly as strong or energetic as I once was. It's amazing how quickly my fighting skills come back to me, however, though I'm only mock-dueling with my sons. They both have quick enough reflexes to keep me on my toes, and are both stronger than their small stature would suggest.

I manage not to burn the pre-packaged soup and rolls I make for them, and after dinner Anikin obediently does his homework Ben needs a lot more coxing, and I almost want to let him off the hook, for his own sake and because I feel as if I shouldn't be left in charge of anything and I seem to enjoy proving it. But not with my kids. They need to be cared for, so they don't turn out badly the way I did, the way Vader did.

I tell Ben that he can stay up a little past his bedtime as long as he stays in bed and reads quietly. He seems satisfied with that and picks out a book, gives me a huge hug and says, "'Night, Dad," heartfeltly. "Will you come back soon?"

I don't like making promises, but I can't say no to those eyes when they're in his mother's head, nor can I when they're in his. "I promise. Go to sleep, okay?"

"I will."

Good enough. I close the door, but Ben calls out before it's fully shut. "Love you, Dad."

First Anikin's power, then his touch. Now Ben says he loves me. How much can I handle in one night? I need spice suddenly, and I feel the weight of the box in my pocket, but I take a deep breath instead and say, "I love you, too, Ben."

I make a similar deal about bedtimes with Anikin, but he says he doesn't want to be left alone. "Why not?" I ask

"I have bad dreams," he hesitantly admits.

A very small amount of adrenaline rushes through my veins, as if I could protect him from his own subconscious. But he's my son—I want to protect him from everything. "What about?"

He shakes his head frantically, and I understand. "It's all right," I say as comfortingly as I can. "You don't have to tell me. I'll stay with you."

I read him a few fairy tales from a book he has, and then I tell him about a real-life young hero who rescued a princess, something that could have happened to me in a past life or a dream it seems to me now, so far removed is Luke the frightened and angry recluse from Luke the would-be Jedi Knight. "Was that you and Mom, Dad?" he asks.

He called me "Dad." My heart soars. The fourth wondrous and frightening thing that's happened today. I nod. "A long time ago."

"Before I was born, right? Before Ben was born."

I nod again.

"Was it love at first sight, like in the fairy tales?"

I don't want to think about that, about the way, every time I look at her, I tingle all over. I look into Anikin's bright eyes, my eyes, on his Leia-shaped face. If some things I had never learned, I could be tucking this boy in every night, amazed at what mine and Leia's love had created. But the memory of it makes me momentarily frightened of the boy again.

"Go to sleep, huh?" I murmur, pulling the blankets up to his chin. I turn to leave.

"Dad!"

I spin back around, startled by the small voice's intensity.

"Don't leave, Dad. I'm_ scared_," he murmurs quickly, in a panic. His voice breaks slightly and his eyes glass over with unformed tears.

That, I cannot handle. Seeing Leia cry tears me apart; seeing Ben cry breaks my heart; but seeing my little Anikin cry for the first time nearly kills me. It's unbearable.

I realize it's the old Luke talking—the afore mentioned would-be Jedi. The hero Luke. It's been years since making anyone cry has done anything but delight me. But I can't do it to children, to my children. That's the power they hold.

"I'll stay with you. Don't worry," I say in a hurry, trying to keep those tears in his eyes, because if they start streaming down his cheeks, I don't know what I'll do. I sit back on his bed where I'd been reading to him and turn off the light.

He sighs contently, all signs of trauma ebbing away. I lay beside him, over the covers, watching his breathe as he falls asleep. I brush blond bangs out of his eyes—too long by a centimeter or so, despite looking well kept up by his mother—and he smiles. Something swells in my chest to see how like me but so much more angelic he is, and I realize it's love. I kiss his forehead and whisper, "I love you, Anikin." He doesn't stir.

I admit it, I love him. Maybe I can hate how he was created and still love him. After all, he's amazing, impossible not to love.

Laying next to my son, I slowly fall into a happy, exhausted sleep.


	14. Luminosity

I'm awoken by the sound of Han and Leia coming home. I glance at Anikin's alarmchrono—they're at lease an hour late. Must've been a fun meeting. They try to be quiet as they come in, but whisper-fighting is somehow more piercing than the usual sort.

I can't make out that they're fighting about, and it doesn't matter, anyway. I sit up carefully, trying not to wake up little Anikin, and rub my eyes in the dark of the bedroom.

Leia appears in a stream of light as the door opens. She smiles luminously at me—but then, all about her is luminous: her braid crown woven with white ribbons, her white gown with the high, gathered waist, her powder-blue cloak with melted snow, her pearl necklace, her flushed cheeks. She's absolutely glowing, either from the cold, or arguing, or from her pregnancy, or from seeing me wake up beside our son. "Did you fall asleep?" she whispers, sounding somewhat amused.

I nod sheepishly.

She smiles even more brightly, taking off her cloak. She already looks more pregnant than she did last I saw her, a week ago—and she's probably closer to seven and a half months than just seven now. I'd forgotten how quickly these things happen. She should have a daughter in a month and a half—sooner if she's born early the way the boys both were.

She's gorgeous.

She sees me staring at her, so I blink it away and stand. My head pounds with the movement—withdrawal. I'd done it, though. I didn't smoke spice once this afternoon, not even the legal kind I sometimes use to tide me over. Even Han smokes that kind, if it hasn't changed, so I'm sure the boys wouldn't have thought it strange if I went out the balcony for a few minutes. But I didn't. I made it.

"Were they good?" she asks.

I nod. "Yeah. They were both great." I look into her eyes. "It's thanks to you, you know." I step out of the doorway and close the door gently, standing now in the bright of the hall with her. "They would have turned out really.…" _Don't say "fucked-up."_ "…Well, different if they'd been around me. But you raised them right. In spite of everything, you raised them right. Thank you."

I look into her eyes again, perhaps granted this short moment of sincerity by my nearly delirious withdrawal state. She locks eyes with me, and if I allow it to go on, I know something will pass between us, some sort of old emotion that I cannot bear. I blink, not fully looking away, but not allowing it continue.

Astonished, she gapes for a moment, if Leia can ever be said to gape. "Maybe," she manages at last, "But I think they need their father, too."

"They have Han," I say, a little distain creeping into my voice.

She shakes her head sadly. I don't know what she means by it.

"They love him, Leia. And he loves them. They don't _need_ me."

"Han takes care of them, but…he never wanted to be called 'Dad,' and he doesn't much act like one…." She rests a hand on her stomach thoughtfully.

"But what about…." I look to her hand in gesture.

She sighs, letting the subject drop. "He's a good care-giver, Luke, and a good friend. But he isn't their father, which he can't seem to forget."

What am I to make of that?

In the living room I pull my boots on over my pants and put on my jacket and leather gloves. Leia watches me silently. I can't read her face, and I try not to look at her.

Han comes into the room, and evidently he and Leia aren't speaking to one another again. "C'mon, kid. Lemme give you a ride home. It's late," he says softly.

I nod, not wanting to argue this time. "Okay."

Leia hugs me goodbye, and I wish I had stopped her, because it makes me very uncomfortable. But she's soft and warm and smells the way she always has. She at once comforts and frightens me.

I pull away and give her a small smile. Han and I leave. He doesn't say goodbye.

As soon as the apartment door closes and we're walking down the corridor, Han shakes his head in frustration. "She's so damn impossible, that woman. How'd you get along with her, Luke? Huh?"

Thrown off my guard, I can only furrow my brow.

"Sorry," he says, calming. "But it's like, all we do is fight, you know?"

I do know. And I'm glad. It's like vengeance, like getting him back for sleeping with her eight years ago. But I feel as if I should say something encouraging, or at least, say…something….

"I dunno, Han. She and I never really fought that much."

"Yeah," he says with a slight sigh. "I guess not." After a pause he adds, "Wanna go get a drink?"

I shake my head. "No…I want to go home. Another time, okay?"

He nods. "Okay." And smiles. "The kids wear you out?"

I nod too, smiling. "Yeah."

We exit into the snow and walk down the ramp to the speeder platform. Han lights one of those legal spice sticks—often called just "sticks," but some use that word to describe the hard stuff, too. I ask him for one, as I usually don't carry the soft stuff with me. He gives it to me, watches as I expertly light it with my own pocket lighter. He raises an eyebrow. "Never seen you do that. I remember one time—you were like eighteen—you took a dark off mine and you were coughing for ten minutes."

I blow out some smoke. "I'm not a kid anymore, Han. These are harmless compared to what I usually use."

"Yeah, he says, concern in his voice. "I know. C'mon—let's go."


	15. Old Times' Sake

Hey, guys. This has to be another short chapter because I have almost no time at all. But I gots t'give the fans what they wants. Hopefully there'll be another up in a few days.

Chapter 15

It really doesn't seem far enough to bother with the speeder, but Han seems to want to, and I let him. The traffic is still heavy despite the late hour, as it always is on Corruscant. Han and Leia's speeder is a sleek black model with grey nerf-hide seats—nearly brand new, from the looks of it. Leia wears expensive gowns, worthy of a princess-turned-president, my boys sleep on down mattresses, and Han—formerly a dirty, ill-mannered, smuggler—drives a luxury speeder. And here I am trying to scrape up rent every month. I don't have a job, because I don't want and can't handle one, but I have my generous veteran's pension from the Republic, which, thanks to Leia, is almost enough to live on—or would be, if I didn't spend it on…various recreational activities. I smile a little, though somewhat grimly, thinking that perhaps Leia had moved to up the pension years ago out of concern for my well-being, wherever I may be. And then I was able to afford more spice. Thanks, Leia.

My thoughts return to the absurdity of the luxury speeder as we near my building, a dingy, dark brick skyscraper—on the smaller side, only around two hundred stories—of housing, meant to be "affordable" and "quality" apartments for the working person, but their upkeep has been bad, and they no longer quite fulfill their mission. At least they're clean. Han parks the speeder on the roof platform. "Do you still fly the _Flacon_, Han?" I ask, wondering how he can reconcile the smuggler turned husband and father.

I see a wince pass over his face. "She's been givin' me trouble. Poor girl's getting old. But yeah, I still fly her, when I get a chance." He smiles a little. "Leia always says I love the _Falcon_ more'n I love her."

I don't smile. It's a bad joke, not funny.

After a moment of awkward silence, I ask, not realizing I was going to ask it until the words are out of my mouth, "You wanna come in for a minute? I mean…." I try to explain myself, "If you still want a drink, I have a bottle of rum and some ales in my cooler. We can make do."

He frowns, as unused to my hospitality as I am. "Why?"

I shrug. "Old times' sake?"

He seems unsure, hazel eyes searching me. He doesn't trust me. That's what it is. He does seem to be overly watchful around me, somewhat hesitant in his speech and mannerisms. What is he afraid of? Am I going to pull a blaster on him? I don't carry a weapon, nor am I quite angry enough at him to kill him. But I doubt it's a question of anger—I doubt he knows just how much I resent him for his involvement with Leia.

Oh. That's not it, is it? It's me, entirely, not anything he thinks I'll do to him—but me presence he doesn't trust. I'm depressed, angry, maybe a little crazy sometimes—but I'm _not_ psychotic.

I smile bitterly—it's almost funny that someone would see me that way, and say, "Fuck, Han. I'm not going to _hurt_ you."

He, however, doesn't seem so sure. But maybe I'm reading him wrong.

I shake my head. "Fine. If you don't want to—"

He stops me from getting out of the speeder by grabbing my shoulder, like the night in the cantina. "I'll come in," he says. "For a minute."


	16. Vader

Lord Vader had not been hard to find. He placed his flagship in my path when he sensed me coming. I knew when to drop out of lightspeed, just as I had known which direction to head in. I had not tried to keep my approach a secret. We exchanged no communications—all was simply understood, a subconscious agreement.

I had hoped to be greeted by Vader personally—hoped and dreaded it, that is, but _needed_ it nonetheless. I was disappointed to be received by a few Imperial officers and a squadron of Stormtroopers. They took my lightsaber away and bound my hands; I let them, indifferently. It didn't matter in the long run. I knew I'd be given back my weapon and set free. It was only a matter of time. They didn't ask me any question, but treated me with a fair amount of respect, that is, considering how much they must have hated me, probably acting so at Lord Vader's request. They called me "Commander" as if Alliance rank mattered to them. I was bemused and wary.

I was brought to a bare room—sleeping quarters for an officer, probably, but devoid of furniture save a black leather couch—and told to sit and wait. "I want to see Vader _now_," I insisted, and considered even mind-tricking him into obeying me. But it hardly seemed worth it. I doubted I'd be kept waiting long.

"The Dark Lord of the Sith does not take orders from a rebel _boy_," a captain sneered, "Nor do I. But he seems to want you alive and treated well. So if you do not want me to go against his orders and have you executed, I urge you to _sit_!"

As if he would. _He_ would die for that, too. But I sat, glaring.

I waited for nearly two hours, I guessed. Finally, I felt his presence drawing near. Dark, angry…excited? Nervous? Strange. I ought to be nervous, I mused, but I wasn't. I didn't need breathing exercises to keep me calm. May hate made me calm.

He entered and did not speak, and there were shields around his mind as soon as he was in the door. He'd waited until then to put them up. Perhaps he underestimated my power. Good. That might make it easier. He regarded me, measuring me with eyes that I imagined blue beneath his mask.

"I see that you have come around, after all," he said evenly, at last. "I feel your anger."

I'm _angry_ at you for keeping me waiting," I spat. "I'm glad you've found time in your busy schedule to—"

"Do not take that tone with me, boy," he warned. "It is not wise."

I laughed. For a moment, he had almost sounded like an angry parent. "What are you going to do, ground me, _Dad_?"

I suppose he was taken aback. He certainly didn't know me well, but he had seen enough of me before to know I was easily frightened not always outspoken. Or had been. But I'd since found that lashing out helped. He didn't answer for a moment. Then, "So, you've accepted the truth."

"I've accepted the truth that you knocked up my mother. That doesn't mean anything. Somebody incapable of love can never really be a father." I looked at him sidelong, waiting for some sort of reaction.

It took a moment. He didn't know what to make of me, I think. When he did, he sounded angrier than before. "You are only saying that because it disconnects yourself from me. You're my son, as you will soon see."

I nodded. "I know. I have seen. But there's one important difference between us."

He didn't ask what. He knew. I had no shields up. The difference was the love I spoke of a moment ago—my love for those Vader had hurt was what had, in part, brought me here. "But your love has also turned to hate," he reminded me.

He removed my binders without another word, and locked me alone in the bare room. I was brought food and I slept on the couch, thinking dark thoughts and dreaming dark dreams. But I didn't see Vader again for three days.

-

Old times' sake, indeed. In the old days, we were like brothers. He was my big brother—watched out for me, taught me things, kept me safe. I was his little brother—I made him laugh, gave him hope, kept him young.

Maybe he's still watching out for me, but I feel as if it's out of distrust. He hesitates in his protection of me for fear of upsetting my delicate senses of independence and sanity, that I can tell. And as for teaching me about life, well, I think I've had about all the life I can handle, and Han knows that.

A smile plays at his lips sometimes as we sit together tonight on my couch, but I don't really try to make him laugh. Awkward jokes made as nothing more than a gesture of gone-by friendship hardly sound appropriate or necessary. They grey beginning to streak though his hair is testament to the fact that he's getting old in spite of everything, and hope is the opposite of what I have to offer to him.

It nearly makes me feel guilty, but I didn't ask for his brotherhood after all this time, for his love that, I'm sure, he thinks is unrequited. He's the one, after all, who followed me out of the cantina a couple of weeks ago. He's the one who seems to want to be friends again, as if nothing had happened.

But, granted, I'm the one who invited him in on some strange bout of friendliness. I'm the one who gave him the bottle of ale he's drinking. I'm the one who could ask him to leave any time I want. But I don't.

After all, why should I wallow in my misery? Yes, this is an absurd situation, and I would rather be alone tonight, to think, to hold onto the tiny spark of hope burning in my soul called Anikin, than to be distracted and reminded of hard times by Han. My emotions about him ever conflict. I view him, even as we talk in my living room, as both a rival and a friend.

Resolved to let it go, forget, maybe someday forgive, in the name of making things better all around for the sake of my sons, I make some stupid jokes which he laughs at. That's encouraging, and I laugh, too. We take shots of the rum together as we had during the Revolution, which, in those days, often brought tears to my eyes and along with some amount of coughing. Today I can take them as unphased as he. Something about that makes me proud, as if the little corner of me that is still a farmboy has finally proved himself to Han. See, I can drink like a man, too.

We drink a little too much, but Han knows when to stop before a little too much becomes a lot too much. He recaps the bottle and sets it on the floor beside his legs, out of my reach. It's probably a good move.

Leaning back on the couch, feeling sleepy from the alcohol, I ask, "Why don't you want the boys to call you 'Dad?'" I ask without thinking first. Had I thought, I probably wouldn't have asked it. I'm glad I did.

"'Cause you're their dad," Han answers, as if it's obvious.

I laugh sadly, shaking my head. "Some dad. I never even met Anikin until a couple weeks ago." I look sincerely into his eyes. "You've been a hell of a lot better dad than I have." It's hard to say that. But it's true, and I'm drunk…and he needs to know that I at least acknowledge it, maybe even, between the times I'm resenting it, appreciate it.

He doesn't answer at first; his hazel eyes shift away, and I can tell I've made him uncomfortable. "I knew you'd come back, sometime. You couldn't stay away from them forever. Leia and the boys, I mean."

I clench my teeth. "I tried. You're the one who followed me out of the cantina," I remind him as I had reminded myself.

He frowns. "Yeah? What was I supposed t'do? Let you run? You're a mess, kid. And Leia's a mess without you—"

"She's not a mess!" I interrupt, either trying to convince him or trying to convince myself. I refuse to believe that Leia could be as week as I. "She's president of the New Republic and is raising two amazing boys—"

Han shakes his head. "No. I mean, yeah. She is. And she has it real together on the surface—and everyone else probably thinks it's real like you. But she just breaks sometimes, Luke. Between what happened to Alderaan and the war and the whole thing with you…."

I draw a deep breath, feeling it shake as if I might cry. But I won't—not in front of Han. "I didn't know," I murmur. "I thought she was okay."

He shrugs. "She usually is, but you think you have it bad, try being' the one would had to carry and give birth to Ben, and do the same with Anikin after you left. I'm surprised she made it at all."

I hadn't thought of that. True to my self-absorbed, self-pitying self, I have seen the evil in my leaving Leia pregnant, but only as it relates to me, what a monster it makes me. I thought she'd be okay. Leia is a survivor. And then I remember the nightmares and the sleepless nights she had after the first Death Star, the memories of Alderaan and her interrogation and Vader, and how she'd crawl into bed with me before we were married, crying. I would hold her, whispering things to make the pain and fear go away, and she'd fall asleep eventually. In the morning, she'd be the same old Leia again, happy but feisty and determined. No one saw the scared little girl Leia but me. And now, it seems, Han knows her pretty well. And the nightmares are partially my fault, now. My fault.

I breathe deeply to hold in the panic, hold in the tears. I need spice. No. No spice—it mixes badly with alcohol. But I need it. My desperation over Leia slowly ebbs away and it becomes about spice…it's suddenly all I can think of.

No. Just let it go. Go to sleep.

I stand, needing to get away, get to sleep so I can stop torturing myself. "I should go to bed," I mumble absently, or at least something resembling the sentence.

"I'll go," Han volunteers, and I can hear in his tone that he knows he's upset me.

I have enough wits about me to say, "Don't drive, Han. You're too drunk."

"I won't," he says, smiling, perhaps touched by my concern.

I smile half-heartedly and stumble off to bed. I thought that it would take awhile to fall asleep, upset as I am. But my thoughts aren't quite as strong as the alcohol, which quiets my mind, and I hardly even dream.


	17. Hangover Breakfast

Readers-Thanks for the 50+ awesome reviews. There's only a handful more exciting chapters. Keep it coming...

Chapter 17

I wake up hungover again, and in the drowsy one-with-the-Force phase I have before I'm awake enough to control it, I sense Han still in my apartment. I snap awake. Pulling on an undershirt and sleep-pants, I stumble into the livingroom. Sure enough, Han is still fast asleep on the couch, mid-morning light streaming in from the transparasteel balcony doors. He's still dressed, even shod, but his black jacket is lying in a heap in the floor, beside the two empty ale bottles and the nearly-gone rum. I sigh and pick up the jacket, annoyed with him, because he has broken my solitude by staying, and my head hurts too much to put up with it. I throw the jacket at his face to wake him up. He jumps from sleep, pulling the jacket away. "Wha—"

"Wake up, Han," I say tiredly.

"Man, am I still here?" he asks, looking around, yawning. "Sith—what time is it?"

I grit my teeth. I hate it when people use that word as a curse. At least Han knows enough not to say "son of a Sith." "Late," I mumble, wandering into the kitchen to see about caf and maybe some toast. "Isn't Leia going to be worried about you?" I ask dryly.

He sits up, rubbing his eyes. "Nah. She probably knows where I am. Besides, I don't always come home, anyway."

I raise an eyebrow at him, but neither of us continues with the subject. He knows what I think of him. Jerk.

He stands, stretching, and follows me into the kitchen. I almost stop him from looking into the cooler, but it's only a reflex coming out of not trusting him any more than he trusts me. He glances over the loaf of bread, small container of bantha milk—it's not exactly classy, but other milk just tastes weird to me—and not much else, and says, "No wonder you're so skinny, kid. You don't eat."

I look up, startled that he would address it so bluntly. But it's true, and even though I don't trust him, and I'm not terribly happy with him right now, I'd like it if I could be honest with him. My low weight is even more apparent in the tight, sleeveless undershirt I'm wearing, and I decide not to dismiss his comment. "It's the spice…."

"Oh…right." He knows, as I knew he would. Spice all but kills the appetite.

"Got any eggs?" he asks, head in the cooler.

A memory flashes into my mind: being eighteen and tasting eggs for the first time—birds are rare on Tatooine—in an omelet made by Han the morning after the Yavin celebration. We were both hungover, as we are now, and he pulled me away from the cup of caf Leia had given me, telling me that caffeine would only make my headache worse in the long run, and what I really needed was some good old Corellian cooking to soak up the alcohol. After that, he almost always made me omelets on morning after parties or battles…or the morning after Ben was born. I wonder if, as ridiculous as it sounds, eggs have a sentimental value for him as they do for me, because of that. That's why I don't buy them.

I don't look up from prepping the caf machine. I don't want to know it there is longing in his eyes for the way things were, before they wert so very wrong. "No," I reply nonchalantly, trying to appear unphased.

"Yeah…you don't have anything."

No, I don't. And I'm not sure if he was only talking about food.

"You gotta eat something with that caf, kid," he says, closing the cooler door and leaning against it casually. "Don't you remember anything I taught you?"

I hesitantly let a fond smile creep across my face, recalling our early friendship. "I remember everything you taught me, Han," I say.

He meets my eyes. I hate it when his own get that soft, imploring look in them. I hate it because it reminds me of how close we had been, tears at the defensive wall of anger that I've been building so long. "Yeah?" he asks, smiling suddenly. "Still got that mean right hook?"

I shrug. "I haven' fought in years."

"Yeah, I guess not. You don't even carry your lightsaber anymore."

I clench my teeth, the anger mounting again. But he didn't know it was a touchy subject. "No," is all I say.

"Why not?"

Fuck. I'd hoped he'd just let it drop.

"I just don't. I don't have it anymore."

True to Han fashion, he doesn't get it. "Yeah, I know you lost one on Cloud City, but I thought you built—"

"I lost that one, too, okay?" I snap.

He blinks, thrown by my outburst. "Okay…."

I sigh to calm myself. The caf machine beeps—it's finished. I pour myself a cup. "Have some if you want," I mumble to Han as I brush past him and sit on the couch. I absently take a spice stick from the box on the caf table, light it, and take a slow drag from it, leaning back. It's been…what? Eighteen, twenty hours since I've had one? No wonder it rushes trough me like enlightenment, like hope and peace. I sigh again, but this time because I am calm, and feeling drastically better.

Han leans in the doorway, looking as if he's trying to say something but can't find the words. At last, at my questioning look, he asks, "Aren't you starting kinda early?"

As if he knew what I was going through…. "Fuck off, Han. It calms me down," I growl.

Glaring at me, he picks his jacket up off the floor and puts it on as he speaks, or shouts, or growls right back, "Come the _fuck_ off it, Luke! I'm trying to spend some time with you to cheer you up, and what do I get? You can't keep treating people like this, people who care about you. Somehow you got it into your head that you get some kinda monopoly on misery just because you fucked your sister, and you can just keep spicing yourself into oblivion until the day you die. And I don't know what you want from me. I don't know if you want someone to give you pity, or just for everyone to leave you alone, but from now on, I ain't giving you either, get it?"

Han isn't much one for long speeches, nor does he often tell someone exactly what's on his mind. Thrown by that, and the intensity and nerve of what he said, I can only sit with wide eyes for a long moment.

Wait…_fucked my sister_? How _dare_ he….

I stand, threatening more with my eyes than I ever could with my body. I know I'm short, and I know I'm thin, and I know I'm not very healthy. But I also know that I can turn my eyes into ice at will, helped by my anger, and it's usually more than enough to scare off anyone. "Get out," I order. "Get out of my apartment."

He doesn't say another word, just goes. He slams the door behind him, and I know I'm upset him at least as much as he's upset me. It seems no matter how far we go, we're always even. I stare at the door for a few minutes, wondering if he'll keep his vow not to leave me alone. Maybe not, and good riddance.

After all, being alone _is_ what I want….

Isn't it?


	18. Guilt

Sorry if there was any mix-up. This is the real chapter eighteen. Enjoy.

Ch 18

The time to kill Vader would come, and I would know it when it did, feel it in every nerve in my body, understand it to the depths of my soul. But I bided my time, feeling him out, waiting.

He came to see me all the time. He would watch me, mostly. Occasionally he would ask me questions about myself, and they didn't always concern my eventual turn to the dark side, my joining him in "bringing order to the Galaxy." Once he asked me, with what sounded like concern, who had raised me. Another time, if I had liked growing up on Tatooine, which turned into a brief conversation about pod racing for some reason. I always kept my answers short and to the point, cold but consenting. He never asked me about the Alliance, which confirmed my suspicion that he had not sought me because of my political agenda, but only because I was his son. I never asked any questions the first few weeks.

One day, that changed. I lounged on the couch watching him stare out the window at hyperspace swirling by. I asked him a question, not knowing why, but on a whim. "Do I remind you of my mother?" That is, assuming he stopped to look at her. He didn't answer at first, perhaps confused by the question, or by my asking it. I regretting having done it immediately, my hate swelling as I thought about Leia aboard the Death Star the day Ben was conceived.

"You…don't look much like her," he said at last, with obvious difficulty. "But you have her spirit."

I blinked. "You knew her, then?"

"I was married to her. A long time ago. Before I was old enough to know what I wanted. What was truly important."

He had been married to her? He had _loved_ her, then?

He must have been listening to my thoughts. "Love is an emotion for foolish children and the weak. I learned that eventually. As you have, or are beginning to, at least."

I shook my head. "No. It's not for the weak. It takes strength to feel, to handle…and…and I don't have that strength any more."

"You have the strength of hate, Luke. It is stronger than love." It sounded like a promise made to make me feel better. Maybe it was true. But one emotion being stronger than another had not been my point.

"Vader?"

He looked at me in response.

"Did you know about me before I destroyed the Death Star? I mean…did you know my mother was pregnant?"

He turned away, and nodded.

He left her pregnant? Of all the terrible—

I swallowed hard when I realized that I had recently done the same thing to Leia.

"You're a grandfather, you know." It didn't matter that I was telling him. We'd both be dead soon.

"You…have a child? He asked in disbelief, turning to face me.

I nodded. "My wife's pregnant." I couldn't bear to tell him about Ben, or who that wife was. My last lingering threads of connection to Leia demanded that she be kept safe.

"You're just a boy—"

"I'm nearly twenty-two. Do the math."

He looked as thoughtful as a man in a mask could. "Has it been so long?" he breathed. Recovering, he said, almost proudly, "One day, Luke, your child will join us here."

I laughed bitterly. "Sweet. Just like I joined you, like a tradition. My son's never coming to join us, father. There won't be anything to join. Neither of us are coming out of this alive."

* * *

I'm well acquainted with the emotion of guilt. But my guilty feelings usually just drive me deeper and deeper into despair—it's rare that I feel the need to apologize for anything. But as I "spice myself into oblivion," as Han so eloquently put it, for the rest of the day, the guilt will not leave me alone. He hadn't done anything wrong. Not until I pissed him off. The remark about Leia was completely uncalled for, but he only said that to upset me. He didn't mean it. Maybe I should say I'm sorry—because if I don't, he and Leia are going to be convinced I'm unstable and never let me see my boys again. They're all I'm living for at this point, and they actually make me want to let go of the anger and sadness and just be me again. Without my boys, I'm nothing.

But I can't go over there and I can't call. Pride, anger, and depression are a terrible mixture.

The thing is, I think maybe I could get better—emotionally and dependency-wise—with the kid's help, if it wasn't for Han and Leia around, reminding me of dark times and broken dreams.

Han's pillow smells like him. I sleep on it tonight, hating him, and missing him terribly.


	19. the Emperor

Chapter 18

I lost track of time—being imprisoned on a starship with no chrono will do that to you. I think that I was on the _Executer_ for almost two months. Per Vader's instructions, I _was_ treated well, brought better food than I'd ever had—which I didn't eat much of—and books and holos to entertain me. There was a bathroom in my quarters with a sunken tub. I tried not to take too much advantage of Vader's hospitality, but I did get bored.

I don't know why I was toted around for all of that time. I think my capture was being kept a secret from the Emperor. I thought then that maybe Vader wanted to keep me a secret to have me all to himself, perhaps as a bargaining chip or simply to train me in the ways of the Sith as he saw fit, with none of Palpitine's influence. Now, I'm not so sure if that had anything to do with it. Now, I wonder if it wasn't out of concern for my wellbeing. I wonder if he was trying to keep me safe. For my sake.

The thought didn't cross my mind at the time.

Vader came to see me almost every day, or sometimes more often. I would sit on my couch and glare at him. He couldn't begin to imagine how much I hated him, the terrible things I dreamed myself doing to him every night. I wouldn't listen to his words when he talked to me; I would wish for my lightsaber so that I could slash through the life-support panel on his chest and watch him die…slowly….

In time, I reminded myself, calming my breathing. In time.

There were strange, erratic moments of honesty between us, such as the time before when I'd asked about my mother. As much as we hated one another, we _were_, after all, father and son, getting to know one another for the first time, we both had questions that came not from ill will or malice, but simple curiosity. I asked him once how he had met my mother, and he gave me an abbreviated answer about a place he'd worked as a kid. He once asked me how long I had been married. "Almost three years," I replied evenly, not wanting to talk about Leia, but not wanting to say so. It would initiate more questions, and I would have to talk more about her in the long run.

"I…married your mother when I was nineteen. About how old you were?" he asked, almost sounding civil for once.

I nodded sullenly.

"I could have her brought to you…" he suggested, perhaps taking my hesitance for longing.

I nearly sprang to my feet, threatening him with my eyes. "Stay the _fuck_ away from her," I growled.

He seemed taken aback—or maybe more than taken aback, maybe genuinely frightened by me, if only for a moment. "Are you threatening me unarmed?" he asked curiously.

Before I knew what I was saying, I answered, "For my wife, I would."

We stared into one another's eyes for a long moment, each daring the other to make a move. Neither of us did.

"Your feelings for her are very strong…."

Are they still?

No. Not anymore. They can't be….

Out of fear that maybe he could sense things that I could not even admit to myself, I backed away onto the couch, drawing shaky breaths, blocking Vader out of my mind.

"You…fear her?" he asked, looking me over, genuinely puzzled. He was no longer provoking me—he was interested.

"It's over between us. That's all," I said softly. "It ended badly and I don't want to talk about it!" I shouted, wishing that we could discuss the dark side instead. That was easy. But this….

"I see…" he murmured, his voice a little more like a purr than his usual growl. "She is the key, then. She is your darkness."

I blinked, not believing my ears. But Leia was my light…now…no longer…?

"Love turns easily to hate, my son," Vader said, and it almost felt as if he were trying to soothe me. "Strong emotions are not stable—this I know well. Your mother was my key."

No. Love's pure. It's the human psyche that becomes twisted, the way both of ours were—the love does not become corrupt. Does it?

"Go away," I breathed, tears in my eyes. I would not let Vader see me cry.

He hesitated, looking down at me with the air of someone who thought he should apologize but did not know how. His guard dropped for a second and I felt a flicker of something softer that I expected to ever feel from my father. But just as quickly, it was gone, long before I could have put a name to it. Resolutely, he turned to leave, his cape swirling behind him.

* * *

The next…morning?...he came to see me again, his manor changed once again to that of the unfeeling Dark Lord of the Sith, no trace of familiarity in the way he addressed me. He told me that he was taking me to the Emperor at long last.

"Where's that?" I asked dryly, absently, refusing to look at Vader.

"That part will be a surprise," he replied maliciously.

* * *

Another Death Star. It was half-built, terrible and huge, its jagged missing sections like holes rotted by the evil contained within. It made me nauseous, angry, afraid for my friends and their cause. I may not have been myself anymore, but I certainly didn't want the Empire to win the war. The evil would stop and it would stop soon. Seeing the Death Star only made me more determined.

"I doubt that you will have the same opportunity with this Death Star as you had with the last," Vader sneered as I stared at in from the bridge of the _Executer_, hands bound, spirits, contrary to expectations, roaring.

"Someone will," I insisted. Several nearby officers glared at me. I glared right back, not caring if they hated me. I hated them, too, and it only made me stronger.

* * *

Honestly, I wasn't afraid of Emperor Palpitine. There are much more frightening things in one's soul than without. That I knew well.

He knew I wasn't afraid of him. He looked into my eyes and I didn't flinch, which he found amusing. Maybe he had been partially responsible for my father turning to the dark side, and for all of the rest of this mess. But by and large, this was a family matter and he was a bystander. Maybe after Vader was dead I'd kill Palpitine, too, before I took my own life, but for know, he did not merit enough attention to be at the top of my hit list.

"I did not expect to find you embracing to the dark side already, Young Skywalker," the Emperor said from his throne, sounding pleased.

"I think 'embracing' is a rather strong word," I answered evenly, calmly. I didn't hate him nearly as much as I hated Vader, therefore he didn't matter as much, and I wanted to let him know that he meant so little to me. He couldn't even upset me. "I'm only using it to suit me purposes—I don't plan to live to become a Sith Lord."

"Perhaps you refer to the immanent attack of your Rebel Fleet."

If I hadn't been so thrown off, I might have reflected that the Emperor was missing the point. I wasn't a Rebel any longer—this ran deeper, much deeper than a traitor to the Empire being converted to the dark side. This was about me, and Vader, and the past. And he had no idea.

But I was thrown off. He saw the surprise, confusion, and fear on my face. I hadn't known of any such thing—I'd left long before the mission was planned. I reached out frantically for Han and Leia and sensed them, not far off. Oh, no….

He laughed. "Ah. You were unaware of the attack. No matter—you need not worry. We're quite safe from your friends here."

So began the longest day of my life.


	20. Apologies

I don't know how long I expect mine and Han's fear and anger to be our masters, but when I don't hear from anyone, him or Leia or my boys, for a couple of days, I begin to worry. I hardly admit it to myself, because it would be admitting that however bothered by their concern and unfaltering caring I act, deep down I've become used to it, maybe even started to need it, because it makes me feel as if I matter, in however small a way, to someone, when the best I could do before was say hurtful things, and impact people in that way. The light I had felt breaking through in my soul begins to dim once again. I fucked it up–I know I did. I had been–undeservedly, I should add–given another chance to be a good father, to be a father at all, and I fucked it up. Han understands how shaky my control of my anger is now. Not that he needed much more proof, but he got it. I'm unstable and a spice addict and manic-depressive, and the _last_ thing that I should be is a father. It must be clear to him now. And it's for the best.

But he made a promise. Whatever else you can say about Han–and you can say a lot of bad things about Han, or at least I can–you can't say that he breaks his promises. He is always, always true to his word. He vowed to give me neither pity nor solitude, so, true to his word, he comes to see me.

He shows up at my door one evening with a canvas bag full of groceries. Near the top I can see a box of eggs. My defenses up, unwilling to be hurt, I glare at him in anger and confusion. He smiles at me helplessly, and the gesture of the omelet-makings is so absurd after the severity of our last conversation, that I can't help but laugh, leaning my head on the doorframe.

He seems heartened by this, and raises an eyebrow. "Can I come in?" he asks carefully.

I nod somewhat reluctantly, happy as hell to see him, sensing somehow–though it's not with the Force, because I've been smoking, and my sensitivity is extremely dull–that he feels the same. "Yeah," I say, and add, half because it's true, but almost meaning it as a joke, "But I'm still mad at you."

He shrugs in his characteristic offhand way. "Fair enough. I'm mad at you, too."

We're still even.

He comes in, and I shut the door behind him, watching him as he enters my small kitchen and begins to unload the bag. "Not mad enough to keep you from buying me groceries, it would seem."

"Hey," he says mock-defensively, "There's only stuff here to put in the eggs. You want groceries, you go buy 'em yourself. Whatcha want in yours?"

I pick out some things and clean up the house a little as Han cooks, somehow feeling obligated to provide him with a somewhat habitable environment. After all, he is feeding me.

"Was Leia mad that you stayed out all night the other day?" I ask from the livingroom.

"Actually, I think she was happy we spent some time together," Han calls. "She thinks you're still mad about that time way back when, when me an' her...

I clench my teeth and refuse to answer. Of course I'm still mad. But I would never admit it. I remind myself to take it in stride. Han doesn't mean anything, he's just really, _really_ bad about knowing what's okay to say. Tactless. Even after five years of being married to a life-long diplomat.

Then, it wouldn't be so very wrong to get him back. "So, you two were speaking to one another again?"

Silence from him. Even, again. I smile to myself.

The omelets finished, Han brings them into the livingroom and we eat them side by side on the couch. But even before we sit down, as he hands my plate to me, he looks me square in the eye, and the honesty in his own is enough to almost make me squirm. I'm not used to honesty anymore. "I'm sorry I said that. About you and Leia."

"'S'okay," I mumble, wanting this exchange to be over. I never asked for an apology.

He acts bothered, his eyes drawing away and a hint of forcefulness creeping into his voice. "No, it's not. And it ain't easy for me to admit I'm wrong, so you're gonna listen. Look, kid–what happened eleven years ago wasn't your fault and it wasn't hers, and the sooner you two realize that, the sooner you're both gonna be okay. And when I said what I said, I think I kinda just made things worse. I was trying to wake you up, and I thought what you needed was a good kick in the head, but...judging by that, I guess I said the wrong thing."

The "that" to which he was referring is the ashtray on my caf table. I admit, it is incriminatingly full, testament to the fact that if my problem is changing in any way, it's only getting worse, as it has been all along. I'm so spiced right now I'm thinking in odd sporadic fragments and my eyes can't focus on any one thing for more than a few moments. And it's still morning.

I shake my head, sitting down, regarding my plate of food with sudden disinterest, when a moment ago it had almost looked good, reminding me of the happy-go-lucky kid I once was. "It's not your fault, Han," I say softly. "I can't control it anymore. Yeah, sometimes things happen that make the cravings better or worse, but they never go away. I'm way past that point–I've been past that point for a long time."

His hazel eyes cloud with worry. I know he didn't know quite how bad it was, and most of the time I don't either. I have rare moments of clarity when it's as if I'm seeing my twenty-nine-year-old self from the perspective of my eighteen-year-old self, who couldn't even fathom what I'm going through, and sees only a sickly, immoral addict, old beyond his years. Someone who can scarcely go a few hours without spice, much less live without it. Someone who is slowly spicing himself into an early grave. I know I am.

That look in Han's eyes needs something from me. I should probably accept his apology. "Thanks, though," I murmur. "I'm sorry, too. For kicking you out. I'm so on edge, so easy to upset...I..." I shake my head with a tired laugh. "I wish I'd never left Tatooine."

Han smiles. "Sure about that?"

"Sometimes," I admit. I'm not sure, as horrible as my life is, if that would be any better in the long run. I think about that a lot.

He gives me a small smile, and tells me to eat my omelet. As usual, once I start eating, I find I might actually be hungry after all. And Han's omelets are as good as ever.

"Oh, hey–almost forgot." Han fishes into a jacket pocket and digs out a paper envelope and hands it to me. I take it carefully, taken somewhat aback.

"Paper?" I ask. "What's the occasion?"

"Open it."

I do. Inside is a thicker piece of paper folded in two, looking elegant with its watermarked borders. A message is written inside by a child's hand that closely resembles mine when I was his age. It's an invitation. "Anikin's play."

Han nods. "Tomorrow night. You coming?"

I smile, thinking of Anikin up on stage. The thought brightens my mood, as thoughts of Anikin always do. "I wouldn't miss it for anything."


	21. Anikin's Play

What hadn't crossed my mind when I agreed to coming to Anikin's play is that many of the parents of Anikin's schoolmates are old friends and wingmates of mine, or at least people I'd known long ago. When I'd been someone else entirely. I didn't say goodbye to anyone but Han and Leia, and I've wondered absently from time to time what explanation, if any, my ex-wife furnished for my sudden departure. There could be a lot of questions tonight, the well-meaning but badly timed or placed sort, the sort that could threaten to send me over the edge in an inopportune setting. Great.

I draw a deep breath, looking at myself in the bathroom mirror. Be all of that as it may, I can't let Anikin down. He doesn't know what an evil person I can be–he looks at me with eyes like the sky over Tatooine and it's almost as if he sees me as pure as himself. I can't break that. Not yet–he's too young.

All that I can do is try to look my best and stick close to Leia. She has such a way with words, and I'm sure she'll be able to diplomatically handle the most uncomfortable of encounters.

As of late, I try hard to cut back on the spice before visiting the kids, but I feel drowsy and listless and distracted without it, so before leaving I drink a lot of caf. I smile ironically to myself. Replacing one drug with another. That's healthy. That'll fix me right up.

I did my laundry and hung some things up for a change, instead of throwing them on the floor, so they'd look nice for tonight. I wear a soft grey tunic with a high collar and a wrap front, black pants and boots. I always have eye drops with me–reddened eyes are a tell-tale sign of being spiced, withdrawn, sleep deprived, or just generally stressed, all of which I experience frequently. I use some, blinking it away as I again regard my reflection, willing my eyes to clear. At least the circles under my eyes seem lighter. I've been eating the leftovers from the omelet ingredients which Han left, and I think actually getting some nourishment for a change is helping. But you can't expect too much of a change all at once, I suppose.

I grab my leather flight jacket and my leather gloves, and I'm out the door. I take a cab to the Palace so I don't have to walk in the freezing late-winter rain. After how much effort went into actually looking presentable tonight, I can't arrive soaking wet.

It's sunset. I've always liked sunset. Parents are standing under an awning before the school entrance, talking about their children. I pay the driver and hurry to join my family, wary of the rain and the faces in the crowd that I dare not even glance at, because we may recognize one another. I pop up my collar and make my way to Han, Leia, and Ben near the door. One thing that has astounded me every time I've seen them is that they all seem happy I'm there–after what I've done, I expect malice. Han and I grasp arms for a moment, smiling, more comfortable with each other for the time we spent together. Ben jumps into my arms and holds me tight. Leia looks at me with a wistful, warm smile, her red tunic bringing out her flushed cheeks. I briefly consider hugging her, but my throat tightens at the thought, and all I do is return her smile. It will take a miracle for us to be comfortable with each other again.

I've never seen a children's play, but I suppose the exaggerated and yet completely emotionless acting is typical of such a thing. Anikin plays his part boldly and over enthusiastically, portraying the sort of mythical hero I'd spent most of my youth and childhood wishing I was. Actually, it's so cute, it's ridiculous. It's absurdly hilarious. I spend most of the play suppressing laughter, and find Leia, seated to my right, in the same state. We lock eyes, smiling.

I glance back to Anikin, and again to Leia. He's ours. Mine and hers. Our mistake, our miracle... It's the most perplexing feeling in the world, to know you've created a life with the woman sitting beside you, a woman you had not seen in seven years, and yet here you both are. And said life is on a stage before you, slaying a dragon. I smile again, first as the beginnings of a laugh, and then more softly, tenderly, as I watch the stage lights dance in her eyes. Her hand sits on the armrest between us, and I brush it with my own, so lightly I can hardly feel it. I don't need to say anything. She knows.

The play ends with wild applause from the very proud audience. We stand to leave, gathering our jackets, Han running of to gather the little star from backstage, Ben gushing about how great his brother was. That's when I hear, "Luke? Luke Skywalker, is that you?"

I freeze. That's Wedge's voice. As soon as I can move, I scan the isle between rows of seats for him. I have to at least say hello–it would be weird if I didn't. Besides, we were good friends once, and he had nothing to do with my leaving. As long as he doesn't ask any inappropriate questions, it shouldn't be too bad, right? And there he is, anxiously happy hazel-green eyes locked on me. I smile without realizing it, and grasp arms with him as soon as he's in reach.

"It _is_ you," he says, sounding satisfied and confused.

I nod. "It's been a long time, Wedge."

"I'll say. What–six, seven years? Man. How _are_ you?"

Loaded question number one. Take it in stride. I shrug. "I've...been worse, that's for sure." I look him over. Besides putting on a little weight, very little, he's the same boy I used to fly with. Back during the Revolution, the other pilots would jokingly accuse Wedge of not owning any clothes except flight suits–it was all we ever saw him in. The green tunic and Corrilian blood-stripe pants he's now wearing are nowhere near a flight suit, but still very Wedge. He looks a little like a dad. "You've hardly changed at all."

He smiles. "You think so? Right after the war, Luke, I got married and had a kid. Right away. I'm a family man now–does that sound like the old me?"

The old Wedge was afraid of girls, I remember with a smile, but very fond of them–almost to the point of poetry and flowers. "Why not?" I ask. "You were always the romantic type." I think of Anikin on the playground. "My son thinks the worlds of your daughter."

"I know–and my daughter thinks the worlds of your son. I think we'll probably have mutual grandkids someday."

"Sounds good."

Leia comes up behind me, Ben in hand. "Hello, Wedge."

He nods to her. "Hi, Leia. You look great."

She smiles, laying her free hand on her belly. "That's a lie. I'm as big as a bantha–but thank you."

"It's true. Hey, Luke, how long are you going to be around?"

I shrug. I hadn't thought about it like that. "Indefinitely. I think...I might be back to stay." I catch a hopeful smile from Leia at that.

"Really? Great. Give me a call sometime, will you? Leia knows my comm signal."

I nod. "Sure."

He leaves, filtering out of he small school theater with the rest of the crowd. I watch him go, and don't turn around until I feel a small hand on my shoulder, the pressure caring and reassuring. It's Leia. "See," she says, "that wasn't so bad."

"No," I murmur, surprised at how easy it had, in fact been. "It wasn't."

* * *

Anikin rides on my back on the walk to the apartment. Han tries to take him, and though Han really is probably twice as strong as I am, and a sleeping seven-year-old isn't exactly light, I insist that I don't mind the weight. Besides, before dropping off, he made me promise that I'd carry him the whole way back. So I will.

He doesn't stir until he's in his bed, and then he only opens his eyes long enough for me and Leia to help him into his sleep clothes, then crawls drowsily under his covers , asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow. I push his bangs away as I had the other night and kiss his forehead carefully. I love him. More than I'll ever begin to understand. "Goodnight, Anikin," I whisper.

Leia smiles tenderly at me. I return it. We leave the room together.

"I'm sorry I ever doubted him," I whisper, closing the door behind us softly. "He's...everything I hoped he'd be–and nothing I feared." I look deep into her eyes, needing her to know that right now, I'm all right. Maybe I will be from now on. "I only wish I'd never left."

"Don't say that," she pleads. "Don't have regrets–you can't change what happened. Just let it go."

It sounds so easy. So very easy. But being here with her, looking into her eyes, having just put our son to bed together, I know that there is one regret I will always have. Hurting her.

I think about leaving, but when Leia sits on the couch I realize that if I'm ever going to finally talk to her about everything, then now, when I'm in a good mood, is probably the best time. I sit beside her, not knowing what to say or how to explain my move, my sudden desire to be close to her. She speaks first and saves me the trouble, beginning with what almost sounds like an "oof." "The baby just kicked my ribs," she explains, shifting to find a more comfortable position.

"Are you all right?" I ask, though I know she is. After all, I've done the father thing before. I remember Ben kicking a lot.

She nods. "I'm fine–she's just running out of room in there. The medds think that she'll be early, like the boys."

I nod. At my best guess, she's just short of eight months, which means only a few more weeks to go. I've been dying to know something, and this seems like a good time to ask. "Leia?"

"Mmm-hmm?"

"What was it like...when Anikin was born?"

Her eyes widen momentarily, surprised at my uncharacteristic concern. "Well..." She hesitates a long time, rubbing her stomach thoughtfully, maybe nervously. "It was hard. I mean, it was an easy birth. Short. But without you there..." She shakes her head. My chest clenches with guilt. "I was scared," she continues. She looks into my eyes, measuring how much she should trust me, I'd guess. "I didn't want to see him at first," she admits softly, her eyes becoming glassy. I want to hold her so badly and tell her it's all right–I don't blame her for not wanting him. I didn't before, either. "I was afraid of him, too. Of what he might be. But Han went to the nursery, and when he came back, he said Anikin was fine, and he looked just like you...so...I asked for him to be brought to me. He made me miss you more, but...since the first time I saw him, I couldn't help but love him."

I nod. Me, too.

I look deep into her dark eyes again, feeling emotions all too familiar, fishing for things to say.

I don't get a chance to say anything because we are interrupted by the sound of hurrying little feet coming down to corridor from the bedrooms. It's Anikin. I hardly get a look at him before he crawls into my lap, whining something about not liking to be alone, and how I should have stayed with him. He throws his arms around my neck and nestles his head on my shoulder. Bemused, unused to this sort of desperate affection from anyone, all I can do is exchange glances with Leia and hold the boy on my lap. She smiles in the same timid, fond way she has at me of late, as if she isn't sure it will be well received. All of my years of solitude have made me forget how to respond to a child's hugs and a lover's smile, so, with a deep breath and a reminder to myself to take things in little steps, I enfold Anikin in my arms and rock him gently until he falls asleep again.

"Do you think he's asleep?" Leia whispers eventually.

"I think so," I reply.

Her smile brightens into a genuine one. "Did you hear him whine? He _is_ your spitting image."

"Thanks," I whisper, not taking offence but instead joining Leia's game good-naturedly. "What about when Ben gets all high-and-mighty, Princess? He's _your_ spitting image."

She laughs softly. For a moment, I almost feel as if we're married again, or at least good friends, feeling safe within the presence of each other. I nuzzle my son's soft, fair hair, happy to have him in my arms, and I breathe the first content sigh I have in as long as I can remember, closing my eyes. "How did we do it, Leia?"

"Anikin?"

I nod. My eyes still closed, I feel her fingers touch mine, and our hands close around each other's tightly. My soul aches but I have to feel her hand in mine, to hold our son in my lap, to bask in the stillness this happiness has given to me.

I open my eyes and meet hers, then trail my line of sight down her velvet-draped arm to our intertwined fingers.

The aching happiness is disrupted suddenly by the sight of a very faint pinkish-white line slashing across Leia's wrist at an angle.

I let go of her hand and turn her wrist over to see the underside and the scar that cuts across it. A scar I have seen the likes of before. I know what it means. It looks like she tried to take her own life.

She pulls her had away just a quickly as I had turned it over, clearly shaken and embarrassed. Drawing a shuddering but brave breath, she says, "Go put Anikin in his bed, and I'll explain."

I nod obediently and pick him up as I rise, carry him to his room. As I tuck him in he doesn't stir–his breathing doesn't even change. Satisfied that he'll stay asleep, I hurry back to Leia.

She's pulled her sleeves back over her wrists, the way they were before, and I realize suddenly that every time I've seen her she's worn long, knuckle-dusting sleeves, like mine. I sit softly beside her, remembering the gentleness that she used to love so much about me, and take her hesitant hands in mine. I turn them slowly until they're underside-up, push back her sleeves one at a time. Sure enough, there's one on each wrist, silver-pink as an older scar, the echo of a clean slice across her white skin. I shake my head in disbelief. Not Leia. Leia would never do something like this–she's too strong, too brave, too dedicated to her family and her cause to give up. She's not me.

"When?" I murmur hoarsely, my mouth dry. "Why?"

Leia draws her hands away, trembling, wiping tears from her eyes as she speaks. Yet the tears do not sound in her voice–she has better control than that. "I should think the 'why' would be fairly obvious. The same reason you're always spiced. I just...couldn't deal with it anymore."

I'm not always spiced–I'm not now. And I almost say so, but instead I look deep into her eyes, trying to tell her without words how sorry I am. I don't have any words for it. "When?" I ask again.

She shakes her head, her frightened breathing betraying the evenness of her voice. "Don't hate me for this, Luke. You'd have done the same if you'd been in my place–"

"I don't hate you–"

"You don't understand. I did it late in my pregnancy with Anikin. I don't know what I wanted to happen, but I thought I'd probably either die or miscarry. I didn't want him, and it was too late for an abortion...I was desperate." She closes her eyes, and more tears stream down her cheeks.

I can't bear to see her cry.

On a sudden impulse, I gather her into my arms and hold her tightly, more tightly than I have anyone in years, letting her cry on my shoulder. She stops holding back, and cries openly, and I don't mind that she's soaking the shoulder of my tunic. "How can I possibly hate you for that, Leia," I whisper gently in her ear, "after everything I've done to you?"

"You didn't try to kill Anikin," she snaps between sobs.

"You did it out of desperation. I understand. I _would_ have done the same in your place. I don't blame you at all." I smile softly, smoothing the long dark hair I used to love to twine my fingers in. "He's here now, Leia. And he's wonderful. Don't worry about it–it turned out fine."

She draws away, her eyes sad and confused, the skin around them blotchy from crying. I wipe her cheeks gently. "I want to show you something," I whisper. I pull away a little more and push back the sleeves of my tunic, revealing the scars that mark my wrists, just like hers.

She gasps and looks at them a long time, finally regarding me in disbelief. "But...you were always so...hopeful. You used to think that there was always a brighter side, and you never gave up. I used to think that you might be able to save the galaxy on hope alone..."

I shake my head sadly. "No. It was too much. I did it a few months after Endor–probably about the same time as you did–but someone found me. I've tried again since–not by slitting my wrists, but with...well...drugs...I've overdosed so many times that I think some of the meds at MedCenter know my name...but I think the first time was the only time I honestly wanted it to work. Every time since, I've gotten scared and called MedCenter's emergency comm."

"Who was it that found you?" asks Leia, when she could have asked any number of things.

"A friend I had at the time, before I...got in too deep. Back when I was trying to go on with things. Back when I thought it would be easy. I guess this is proof that it wasn't. Did Han find you?" I ask, trying to keep the disdain from my voice. I feel better about him in general, but the thought of him picking up the pieces Leia's heart for her after I left still bothers me.

She nods. "And he took care of me afterwards. He's never mentioned it again since it happened, but I think he's always understood–about us, I mean."

I was about to ask her what she meant, but I look down at our hands clasping one another's needfully, and I think I know. "I'm so sorry, Leia," I breathe, and for the first time, I mean it with all of my heart. I can see now, I think, why Ben never said anything to me about Leia until it was too late. Because we needed each other, and the moment we lost that, we lost the ability to carry on. "I didn't know I'd caused you all that pain–"

She shakes her head, bringing up a hand to cup my cheek. "There isn't anything either of us could have done differently–please don't have regrets, Luke."

I can feel tears welling up in my eyes; I nuzzle her hand. I do have regrets. I regret almost everything I've ever done. What could possibly redeem a man from that?

I remember Vader's dying words, wondering what he meant, and perhaps beginning to understand for the first time. His love for me had made him save my life in spite of how we hated each other, all we'd done to hurt each other. He still loved me. And maybe now my love for Leia...

I blink, realizing what I'm thinking, feeling. My _love _for Leia?

My _love_...?

Oh, gods...oh, no...

Drawing my hands away, my breathing speeds up and I begin to make up excuses and explanations in my head for what had just happened. I didn't mean it that way, I insist to myself. I either meant the love we used to have, or...or...

I squeeze my eyes shut in resignation. Who am I kidding?

I look into Leia's eyes, her worried, dark, beautiful eyes. How can she sit there with me? Doesn't she know what's going on inside me? All these fucked-up feelings and backwards thoughts, confusing me and making me want things I can't, under any circumstances, have. I'm just like my father, only better controlled, and the tiniest slip of anger could send me spiraling into the dark side to the point that it would be dangerous not only for me, as it is now, but those around me. I'm capable of hurting people, killing people, making them go insane, _raping_ people. It's all happened before. My soul is poisoned. I'm not the Luke she once loved, and the part of me that still loves her is quite possibly the sickest part.

I rise. "I should go," I murmur.

"Why?" she asks.

"Leia," I implore her, "Please. Just let me."

She doesn't speak, doesn't nod, just gives me a resigned look. Without another word, I grab my coat and run out the door. I don't intend to ever come back. It's for the best.


	22. All We Really Have

That day aboard the Death Star will live on in my memory as if were yesterday, forever. No matter how much I go over it in my head, it never falls into the same pattern of thought like other memories do, the sort of pattern you acquire from thinking about something so much that at last all you remember is having remembered it before. These memories are so clear and strong that there are no patterns, just as there are no patterns when it is happening. I fought Vader.

It wasn't the first time–I had a missing right hand to show for that. But this time it was entirely different. It had certainly been personal before, but now knowing about mine and Leia's conception made my hate for him a hundred fold greater, burning inside me like no emotion ever had. Save maybe love–with Leia. And the thought of her pushed me on. Drawing my power from those feelings, I fought harder and faster than ever before, and better, too. I saw openings in Vader's defense that were so minute that I never would have noticed them before, and I took advantage of them. My thrusts and cuts as well as my blocks and deflections were more finely tuned than my skills. It was the dark side of the Force, flowing through me like blood in my veins. It made me powerful, gave me clarity, made my passion useful instead of a hindrance. For the first time, I thought I understood the true nature of the Force. I loved it.

The Emperor heard my thoughts–I had no reason to hide them. He laughed gleefully at my acceptance of his religion, and encouraged me from his throne to "use my aggressive feelings." I ignored him completely. This wasn't about him. He was missing the point. After all, there were those who fell to the dark side, and then there were Sith. I would not be a Sith–I was too smart for that trap. The Sith were as bad in my mind as the Jedi. It was because of the whole Jedi/Sith conflict that I grew up an orphan, that I was separated from Leia, that the Empire rose, and that all of the details of my own life were kept hidden from me. I would have no part after tonight. Not with the Sith, not with the Jedi, and not with the Force at all. All it did was cause conflict and pain.

Vader and I were matched, and the fight continued for a long time. How long, I'm not sure, but judging by when I came aboard and when I left, I'd say at least an hour all together. He kept talking to me though I didn't say a word, obviously trying to rile me enough to snap and swear my devotion to the Sith. But I didn't budge. Besides, didn't he understand? If I was going to snap, that is if I hadn't already, it was going to be much the worse for Vader.

It was when he started talking about Leia that it started working. "Luke," he said, "If you join me, we can see to it that you wife and child are kept safe when the Rebellion is destroyed. It is the only way you can save them."

I thought of Ben and Leia and the new baby killed by a firing squad or worked to death in a camp and my blood ran cold. There was defiantly a difference between never wanting to see my son, and being happy with the thought of my own flesh and blood brutally murdered. "That's not true," I spat. "There's more than one way to end this war!" I thrust at his chest, but he deflected. We fought on.

"You can save the others, too," Vader offered. "The other pilots in your squadron. That Corellian you are fond of. I can see to it that they are not mistreated after our victory."

Han. Han wasn't part of this–he didn't deserve to be put in the middle, to even be talked about by the monster before me. I pushed him from my mind, and fought all the harder.

After a long time, I could see I was beginning to get the upper hand. Slightly. But Vader was weakening, I could see that. His breath was regulated and could not speed up, but it sounded heavier, much harder. Yet he blocked and cut with the same rhythm as myself, the same rhythm as before. It was only my hate that kept me quick and strong.

"Your wife is a traitor to the Empire, Luke," Vader continued, desperate to break me. He couldn't hold out much longer. I had more stamina. "She is a traitor to your heritage. Do you expect her to crawl into bed with you when she learns who you are?"

Memories of rolling with Leia on an Alliance cot, tangled in sheets. Memories of feeling her all round me, needing me. Memories of hot, soft skin like a princess should have, pressed up to mine as we fell asleep. They clenched at my heart because I hated those memories, hated what I'd done. And because they were things I could never have again, so long as I live.

"She knows!" I growled. "She knows who I am–what I am. And what I am is _your_ fault!" I hadn't thought it was possible, but I fought harder, muscles burning, painful breath tearing at my lungs, hate caught in my throat. "And it's your fault that the Jedi fell!" Enraged thrust, barely blocked in time by my opponent. "And it's your fault that Ben and my aunt and uncle are dead." Downward cut, deflection. "And it's your fault that Leia went through all of that!" He didn't know what I was talking about, but that didn't matter. Side cut, deflection followed by a feeble attempt at a thrust on his part, easy block. "And it's probably your fault my mother's dead!" My thrust was knocked back with such force that I fell to the floor, Vader's saber threateningly at my throat. I felt anger from him such as I'd never felt before.

There was a long pause, the only sound our heavy breathing. "Kill me," I said. "Just do it. I want this to be over."

We were below the main throne room, having chased one another down to the shadows. I couldn't see the Emperor any longer, and if he was still chuckling I couldn't hear him. Vader regarded me a long time, and finally dropped his guard. "I did not mean to kill her," he said as quietly as his mechanical voice would allow him. "I did not mean to."

I blinked in amazement. He _had_ killed her. He had murdered the person he loved more than anything else. And here he was softly admitting it to me as if he needed to unburden his conscience. As if Vader had a conscience.

"Until a few years ago, I had thought I had killed the child inside her as well. But here you are."

I could have sworn that was affection in his voice. I looked up to meet his eyes though his mask. "Why are you telling me this?" I asked, and my trembling voice betrayed my feelings. "I don't want to hear this!"

"Go home," he said, shutting off his lightsaber. "Go home to your wife and child. Do not make the same mistake I did."

I gaped. "You're letting me _go_?"

"I will see that you are not harmed."

He turned his back on me to return to his Emperor. Big mistake.

I was up again in a second, lightsaber ignited, rushing at Vader. He didn't turn around, but whether it was because I was too quick for him or because he welcomed death, I will never know.

Thrust. The smell of singed plastic, cloth, and flesh.

He fell. I watched him crumple at my feet. He didn't move, though I could feel that he was still alive. Still, I had cut through the lungs and numerous workings of his life support systems. It was only a matter of time. I did not feel the glee I thought I would. I felt guilt, remorse. We were no longer fighting–it was murder.

But I let out a long sigh of relief. It was over. It was finally over. It was worth all the guilt in the worlds, just to have this peace now.

"Come here, boy!" I heard from above. Of course. The Emperor sensed Vader's defeat and wanted me to take his place. Clutching my lightsaber, I climbed to the main level and regarded Palpatine calmly, the relief of my accomplished task replacing the burning hate I had felt before.

"I felt that," he purred. "The way you took your father's life, when he had every intention of setting you free." He smiled. "It was brilliant. And yet you feel guilty."

I did not answer.

"Poor boy. It is natural to feel remorse for such an act. But you can use that feeling constructively. Join me, take your father's place at my side, and we will end this war together. I know how you value life, Skywalker, and that you want the people of the Galaxy to be happy. So do I. We can bring a new era of compassion to the Empire. If I teach you the ways of the Sith, you will be powerful enough to reach your goals, Darth–"

I would not be christened as a Sith. I cut him off insistently. "I'm not Darth. I'm not Darth anything. I've renounced the Jedi, but I will never embrace the Sith." I took a last look at my lightsaber, and cast it into the seemingly endless shaft to my left to be lost forever. "You've failed, Your Highness. It's over. I understand the game you've played with my father for all these years, and you're not doing it to me, too. I'm too smart for that. This ends _now_."

His gleeful and falsely compassionate smile abruptly faded. "I see," he said in a dark, disappointed tone. "I believe I underestimated you. I had expected your connection to you father to be your downfall, but it seems to have been his instead. You are indeed clever, boy." He rose carefully, his old body weak. "Too clever, I think, to let live." He walked towards me slowly, and I stood firm, the relief growing. I was going to have peace at last. He was going to kill me, and I would be free.

There are better ways to die, I would imagine, than by Force lightning, but it was so welcome to me that it was almost sweet. I didn't resist, didn't cry out, just relaxed and let it take me. I fell when I no longer had the energy to stand, and waited as darkness flooded my eyes.

But I woke up. He had stopped at making me unconscious, not bothering to finish me off. I opened my eyes to a blinding headache and was shocked to see Vader laying beside me.

He was breathing, in extremely raged and weak regulated gasps. Gathering all of the strength I had left, I sat up and stared him threateningly in the face. "What happened?" I asked. "Where is he?"

"Down...the...shaft..." answered Vader.

I glanced over my shoulder, unbelieving what I heard. "How?"

"I...couldn't let...him...kill you," he gasped.

A blaze of anger rose in my chest, and I shouted desperately. "I _wanted_ to die! Damn you!" Cold angry tears coursed down my cheeks, the kind that seem to be created of their own accord while you're distracted. "How dare you save me! I killed you, and you saved me?"

I collapsed on his wounded chest, sobbing uncontrollably, clinging to him as if he really were my father by more than blood. I didn't show my shock when I felt his hand gently touching my back, smoothing my hair as if he was trying to comfort me. "My hair...was that...color..." he mused softly.

I looked up, again meeting his eyes through the mask. "Why?" I demanded desperately, crying and screaming. "I hate you! You're evil! How could you possibly _love_ me?"

"Sometimes...Luke...love...is all...we really...have..."

His hand slid off my back. His breathing grew weaker for a few moments.

And then it stopped. Darth Vader was dead.

I sat watching him for a long time, not understanding anything that had just taken place. I was alive. I was alive because Vader had saved my life. I was too confused to be upset any longer.

My heart clenched to look at him. Maybe somewhere inside, he had still been Anakin. Maybe Leia was right.

At last, I rose and left. In the turmoil of the evacuation, no one seemed to notice that I stole a shuttle and escaped.

That night we won the war. I didn't celebrate. I found myself on Corellia a few days later in a medcenter with radiation poisoning and a few really bad bruises. When they released me, I got a little apartment there in a big city and tried to forget everything, Leia, Han, Ben, the new baby who was due any day, Vader, the Jedi, and the Alliance. Even Rogue Squadron. I wanted it all gone from my memory. But I made good on my promise to let them know if I lived. I sent a message from a public console and messed with the signal so that it would be hard to discover its planet of origin. All it said was, "Congratulations, guys."


	23. Goodbye

I've disconnected my comm again. I don't want Leia to call and ask me why I ran off three weeks ago. It's better we not speak again, not meet, not gaze into each other's eyes and hold hands and open up to each other... It's better Han goes on taking care of my boys for me. He's a good father–it was better all along. I never should have gone home to him and Leia and the boys. I never should have met Anikin. I'd thought that he opened a window in my soul, but now I know that all he did was make me let my guard down. His perfectness and light lie, making it seem that somehow there was nothing wrong me conceiving a child with Leia. Better I'd never met him. Never fallen in love with him. It's wrong.

I've gone back to my old ways. There's no food in my kitchen and the circles from sleeplessness and bad nutrition are back under my eyes. Not that it matters, I think wryly. No one sees me except handfuls of people in my favorite smokey cantina, somewhere I'm _not_ the shadiest being for a change.

This is how my life is supposed to be, I think with a tired sigh. At least now.

I guess I can only pretend so long, though. It's easy to hide, to lurk in the shadows and get high and act like I don't care about anything, including myself. But I can't deny that the past weeks since my family came back into my life–is it two months yet? or not quite?–have changed me. Changed me back, I should probably say. I know now that Leia suffers deep down the way I do. The Luke of two months ago would have smiled darkly at that, but this Luke's not quite sure how it makes him feel. There's a measure of satisfaction, to be sure, but the farmboy-would-be-Jedi has now been remembered, and _his_ feelings are felt by me as well. That Luke hurts constantly, and longs to be at Leia's side.

_You see, Leia_, I think to myself, sitting in the aforesaid favorite smokey cantina with a glass of strong Corellian whisky before me and a strong lit spice stick in my hand. _You see, Leia...the problem is, the hope I had, **was** you. I could have saved the Galaxy with my hope alone so long as I had you._

But it's more complicated than that. I shake my head, confusing myself. I can hardly keep a strait line of thought–spice and alcohol mix badly. Like I care.

I take a long drag, first letting the air out of my lungs and then holding in the smoke in for a long time to get the full effect. It's technically illegal to smoke hard spice in a cantina, but I'm sure not the only one doing it here.

A middle-aged man sitting beside me has had a few too many drinks or something, and he leans over to me, drunkenly carrying on a one-way conversation with me as I try to ignore him. I pop up the collar of my coat, hiding my face in annoyance, anger, and fear of having my space invaded.

"You got kids, boy?" he asks me eventually.

I blink, looking at him for really the first time. Boy? It's been a long time since I've been called that. I look too hardened and angry to be mistaken for a teenager anymore, regardless of the small stature and the big blue eyes. "Kinda," I mumble, downing the rest of my drink quickly. But two months ago, I would have said no.

"Kinda?" he echos. "What's that mean?"

"I have them," I admit quietly, not sure why I'm volunteering the information, "But they live with their mother."

The man laughs and slaps me on the back. I cringe and shut my eyes. Don't touch me. "She kick you out?"

I clench my teeth. "No."

"Then why'd you leave, son?"

I can't tell him the truth–because I'm still in love with her. Right. I'm not trying to explain that one. "Leave me alone," I grumble, and order another drink. A double.

"Slow down there, kiddo," the man beside me insists, as if he were one to talk. He can hardly stay on top of his stool. "Ain't ya kinda small for all that whisky?"

First he rubs acid in my love wounds, then he draws attention to my size, or lack thereof. "Fuck off," I insist, downing half the drink.

"Listen to me, boy," he persists, taking on a serious, almost fatherly tone. "It she'll take you back, go back, before you get to be an old drunk like me."

Old? Not yet. Drunk? Plenty. "I'm only going to tell you to leave me alone one more time," I warn, surprised I haven't lashed out already.

"And then what, squirt?" he asks sounding amused.

_Squirt?_ The nerve... "Don't think I can't hurt you. I was a Jedi once."

That's all he needs to know. He draws away cautiously. "All right," he resigns. "But take my advice. When it comes right down to it, love's all that really matters anyway, right?"

I blink, startled. They weren't Vader's exact words, but the meaning was the same.

The stranger leaves, afraid I might start a fight, and I sit for a little while, finishing my drink and stick listlessly. Maybe I should go talk to Leia one last time. Tell her why I left. She deserves to know that much, and she deserves to know how Vader died. I should have told her that before.

Normally, the thought would never have occurred to me, but I've had enough spice and alcohol tonight to make anything seem like a good idea. I glance at the chrono above the bar–almost midnight. She's probably still awake. I should hurry–with the baby due in a couple weeks, she's probably tired. But she's going to hear me out, dammit.

I take a cab, too tired and intoxicated to stumble there myself. I find my way to her apartment and ring the door buzzer, no thought in my mind as to what I'll say when she answers.

The door opens quickly, and she's still dressed in a pale green gown gathered above her stomach. She hasn't been asleep. She frowns, bracing her back with one hand and holding the door open with the other. "Luke?"

"Hi," I say sheepishly. I glance behind her. What I really need to say cannot be said with anyone present. "Are Han and the boys here?"

"Han's out and the boys are asleep. Luke where have you _been_?" She sounds worried. "I've been trying to get ahold of you."

I steady myself on the doorframe as I enter, nearly tripping over the small rise. "I turned off my comm. I didn't want to talk to you."

Leia folds her arms across her chest and frowns. "Are you _drunk_?"

"No!" I insist. It's so obviously a lie that I laugh.

"Yes, you are," she insists in turn, shocked. She takes my arm to steady me and helps me to the couch in the greatroom. I sink into it tiredly. "You need to stop doing this to yourself," she pleads.

I laugh again, ironically this time. "Why?"

"It's destructive. You're going to hurt yourself–"

"Things mover from order to disorder. It's the way of the universe. And it's the same with people." Everything's distracting me as if I have a fever, and I grapple with my mind to form one coherent thought about why I came. But the only thought I can quite fathom, quite grab onto as I look up into her dark eyes is, "I love you."

There, I said it.

Her eyes go wide and she shifts away. If I wasn't so hammered I think I would be able to feel her nervousness without trying. I laugh. This is ridicules. "So shocked? Why do you think I drink and smoke so much? Why do you think I ran out of here the other day after how well things were going? Why do you think I never came back after I killed Vader? Leia, I'm not so scared of what _has_ happened as what might still. Don't you understand? It's not because I married you, or because I killed my father or anything so much as the fact that after all I know, after _seven_ years, my feelings for you haven't changed. Not at all. I love you." I draw a shuddering breath. "That's why I had to come back to say goodbye."

"Goodbye?"

I nod. "Yeah. I have to get away from you and Ben and Han and _especially_ Anikin once and for all."

She blinks and a tear streams down her right cheek. "But...you were getting better."

I shake my head sadly. "No. I'm never going to get better. Every time I look at you..." I brush the tear away gently and kiss the place it had been. "It hurts too much." We come together and hug tightly, and even after it stops being a real hug, I cradle her against myself lovingly. "I need to tell you something else, and I'm sorry I've hidden it from you. Vader died saving my life, Leia. I gave him his mortal wound, but it was saving me from the Emperor that finished him off so quickly. He would have died regardless, but he used his last ounce of strength...for me. He killed the Emperor for me. After that, he told me that love is all we really have, and then he died. He still loved me–you were right. I don't know how he could have loved me, but he did. I've been thinking about it a lot lately, and, well, I thought you should know."

She looks up into my eyes, tears coursing down her face though she is completely calm. I wipe them away again, and kiss her.

I kiss her softly and sadly on her lips, lingering longer than I know I should–I shouldn't even be doing this–but I can't help it. I've needed this so long.

Just as I'm beginning to pull away, I hand on my shoulder forces me to, and even before I realize the hand belongs to Han, he's punched me across the face. I fall off the couch to the floor, and motor controls are sorely lacking as I try to gather myself up. I glare at Han. It is not wise to piss me off.

"Han!" Leia shouts, sounding frightened. "Han, stop it! He's drunk–you can't hit a drunk man! And I am not going to let you hit _Luke_ at all."

He's calmed enough by her words to leave me laying on the floor and not try it again, but under other circumstances I wouldn't put it past him. I've seen him pick up men he's knocked down just to knock them down again. "Get out of my house," he growls through clenched teeth.

My own words back at me. Well, if he wants to be even again, it's gonna take more than that. I wipe the blood from my cut lip and stand with quite a bit of difficulty. Leia tries to help me, but I pull away. "I'm all right, Leia. I'll go." I take two calm but wobbly steps towards Han, not intimidated in the least by his size. It might be the drugs, it might be my anger. Either way, I'm not afraid of him. I turn my eyes to ice. I'm so calmed by my anger, in fact, that he doesn't see it coming when I hit him square across the jaw, throwing him to the floor. I laugh. "Mean right hook–right, Han?" I jeer, already heading for the door.

* * *

When I finally get home, and I've walked off some of the alcohol, the reality of what happened sinks in. I kissed Leia.

I kissed Leia.

I kissed her...

Oh, fuck...

I run for the bathroom, making it just in time to throw up what little is in my stomach–mostly whisky. What the fuck's the matter with me? When I was kissing her, I liked it. And now it makes me sick.

I was just drunk, that's all.

Sure. That's all.

You're not fooling anyone, you know.

I shake my head, sitting tiredly on the bathroom floor. After all, it's not as if I don't understand the situation. I do. It's what takes up my thoughts too much of the time, wondering about this, about her. I know I can't have her, and I hate myself for wanting her, for still dreaming about making love with her, and then feeling sick in the morning. It's always these cycles of wanting and then resenting, spiraling downwards, and then repeating it all again. Except this time, I really did kiss her. And I want to again, dammit.

I shut my eyes tightly and will the nausea back. What am I supposed to do now? I've said goodbye, so there's nothing keeping me on Courscant. I could go off planet and hide for awhile somewhere, somewhere far away, start over as I have a dozen times whenever I get attached to someone or get in trouble or have any other reason to uproot, because there's nothing keeping me anywhere.

But if I keep running, Leia's going to keep catching up with me inside like she always has. She doesn't even know it, because it's all in my head. Eventually the strange promise of a new place evaporates and the only thing I can think about is her.

I shake my head, resting it on my knees. I'm out of my mind.

Well...

I raise my head and regard my tiny, dark apartment. I can't stay here, either.

My head is starting to pound with stress and sickness and too much spice and alcohol for one night, so I pull myself to my feet and take couple strong pain killers, not bothering to swallow them with water–I gave up on that a long time ago. Honestly, I just chew them. On the bottle it warns not to mix them with other drugs, but my head hurts _now_–it's not going to wait for me to sober up.

I flop down on the couch, still looking at the bottle. It's about half full.

Half full, huh? Optimistic all of a sudden?

Yeah. I smile to myself. More optimistic than I've been in a long time.

_Drug and Alcohol Warning,_ the bottle reads, _Do not take with alcohol. If you are using other medicines or drugs, consult your medd before use. If overdose occurs, or of accidently taken with alcohol, seek immediate medical attention._

_Accidently._ Right.

I smile grimly to myself.

Half full.

That should be more than enough.


	24. Love's Not Like That

Author's Note: I was going to save this chapter for a few days, but everyone seems panicked about what's going to happen next. So here's the next one. Oh, and by the way, there's still a little more after this, too.

Chapter 23

Spice, plus the little alcohol left in my system after my nausea spell, plus most of the rest of the pain killers...

And I can hardly stay awake anymore.

I lay on the couch, more relaxed than I've ever been in my life, wondering if I should try to swallow the rest of the pills, just to be safe. If I wake up again, I'll have let another chance pass me by, and I'll never forgive myself.

No. It will be fine. I don't want to have to reach for them. I can hardly move now, anyway–too weak. To beautifully weak. Like I'm about to sleep better than I ever have in my life. I guess I am.

And then it starts. It always does, this time and the other three times I've tried to overdose. I get scared. When I fall asleep, I think, I'm not going to wake up again. Never again. I will be lost to darkness and unconsciousness for who knows how long? It seems that Obi-Wan was granted some sort of spiritual eternal life, but what am I to expect?

Peace, I remind myself. No more worry, or pain, or guilt, or memories. It will be gone. I'll be finished.

But my eyes are wide open, staring at the disconnected comm unit. _No,_ I insist to myself._ You are not calling meddcenter. You're really doing it this time._

One time a medd told me that I didn't really want to die. If I did, I would have done it a long time ago, and not been so hesitant in my methods. I would have jumped off a building, or put a blaster in my mouth. But overdosing gives me the opportunity I need to change my mind.

If I were feeling stronger, I would laugh. That's ridicules. This is what I have wanted for a long time. The only reason I couldn't do it is that I've somehow lost all of my courage. But today I'll keep my resolve.

The darkness starts to take me, the familiar black warmth of drug-induced unconsciousness. I sigh gently, welcoming it, trying to pretend as if I'm just falling asleep. I close my eyes and shift a little on the couch, not because being comfortable will help, but because I want this to be as easy and gentle as possible, the opposite of my life.

But it hasn't been all bad, has it? Memories of the Revolution come to me, memories of good times, mostly with Han and Leia. I remember the celebration after the battle of Yavin, the night I found Leia upset over the baby she didn't tell me about until later. It was the first time I got drunk–I was so sick–and I finally feel asleep curled up in the booth at the holochess table on the _Falcon_. Han and Chewie found me there and carried me to a bunk, and I woke up still sick and very confused in the morning. I think it was then that I realized that Han had some natural tendency to take care of me. When he shot the TIE fighter off my back at the first Death Star, it wasn't because of a sense of duty, or because of loyalty. It was because I was a kid who he just needed to look out for somehow. He put me to bed that night, and made me breakfast in the morning. I loved him as much as I ever loved Leia, though it was different, of course. And look at how we treated each other tonight. What happened to us?

And now I'm going to die with a cut on my lip from his fist. And he's going to hear about my death with a black eye of my own doing. I force my eyes open.

I can't die with us hating each other like this. I said goodbye to Leia. Maybe I should apologize to Han.

I drag myself off of the couch, feeling like I'm led moving through water. I sit on the floor before the comm and reconnect the wires. I can hardly reach the controls from the floor, but I know I can't stand. I barely manage to punch in Han and Leia's signal, but it happens at long last. I slump against the wall and wait for an answer, praying it is Han who picks up.

Finally, a groggy and disgruntled deep voice answers, "What?"

"It's Luke," I reply with some effort. Stay awake, I order myself. Just a little while longer. "I'm sorry to wake you up...I just needed to talk to you."

He sighs tiredly. "Okay. About tonight? Kid, I didn't mean to get so outta hand–"

"It doesn't matter now," I say impatiently. He doesn't know how urgent this situation is. I can't waste any time. "Han..." I want to tell him what he's meant to me, but the words don't come. I think of the time he put me to bed, and when he took care of me all night on Hoth after the Wampa attack, and last month when he stayed over all night, which does seem suspiciously as if he had been keeping an eye on me out of concern. If only I could have him by my side, watching over me now. I ask him on a whim, because I know that otherwise when we end the transmission, it will be silent and lonely until my time comes, and I don't want that. "Will you come over? Please?"

"What–right now?"

"Yeah."

"Why? You okay?"

If I tell him what I've done, it will scare him, and he'll come running. "Because I don't want to die alone."

Shocked silence, then an urgent, "What'd you do, Luke?"

"I..." I laugh helplessly. "I took these painkillers...a lot of them...with some spice and alcohol."

I hear rustling on the other end. He's getting dressed and he sounds terrified. "How much is a lot? Keep talking, kid."

"Um...I dunno. Almost half one of those regular-sized bottles."

"And how much do you weigh?"

I hesitate.

"Luke! Talk so you can stay awake while I'm on my way over there!"

"I was _thinking_! Around fifty kilos, I think. Maybe a little more."

"That's _all_?"

"That's all."

"Fuck. I don't know how you didn't drop dead instantly." Silence. Then, I hear a click and I assume he's switching the signal to a portable comm. "Still there?" he asks.

"Yeah."

"Keep talking so I know you're awake."

"What do you want me to say?"

"Anything!"

"Han, calm down. It's okay. This is what I want. I just don't want to be alone."

"I know, I know."

I blink my eyes open yet again as a thought occurs to me. "Did you call meddcenter? Because if you did I swear I'll jump out of my window right now."

"Kid, I've been on the comm with you the whole time. How could I of called meddcenter? Don't worry–I'm coming over alone." I hear the repulser lifts and engine of that black speeder engaged, and Han coaxes me again to keep talking. But the darkness begins to take me, and I lose the sound of his voice shouting my name.

I'm reawoken by a loud crash after what must have only been a few minutes. I can barely open my eyes, but I finally figure out that the crash was the sound of Han breaking my door down. He rushes to my side, calling my name. I whisper his in return. "Dammit, Luke," he says gently. "When you stopped talking, I thought..."

"I'm still here," I whisper. "Barely."

He takes me in his arms–he seems to have no trouble carrying me at all, but then, I must weigh half of what he does. He lays me on the couch and kneels at my side, shaking his head. "Why'd you do it? It's not because of today–"

"No. Nothing like that, nothing to do with you. It's just...everything."

No. I should tell him the truth.

"All right. It's mostly Leia. It _is_ Leia. You saw me kiss her, Han. I don't deserve to live. Feelings like this aren't right..."

A bemused expression appears on his face. "You're killing yourself because you're still in love with Leia? Luke, I knew that all along. Anyone who saw you two together would be able to tell."

I furrow my brow. "And...you were all right with me being around?"

He shakes his head again. "You don't get it. Kid, me and Leia are getting a divorce."

My eyes open wider in panic and surprise. "Why?"

He shrugs helplessly. "The official reason is 'cause we fight all the time. Which we do, but if that was all it was, we could still make it work."

"Then what's the real reason?"

He says it as if it's obvious. "You."

Great. One more thing. "Me?"

"Yeah. She never talks about it, but I know where her heart is. Never left you."

I swoon for a moment, nearly losing my fragile grip on consciousness, but I wake up again when Han shouts my name. Forcing my eyes open again, I ask, "And your baby?"

Another shrug. "Last stitch to save the marriage," he says as if it's a question. "We're glad we're having a kid...it's just the still being married part we're having trouble with."

"This is all my fault..."

"No, it's not. More'n half the things you blame yourself for had nothing to do with you. We filed way before I found you that night because we weren't happy. It's just not official yet."

I sigh tiredly, fighting to keep my eyes open. "Han, I'm _dying_. Give it a rest. What does this matter? Why are you telling me all this?"

"'Cause you're not gonna die."

Fuck. "What'd you do?"

"Called meddcenter."

"But you were on the comm with me the whole time–"

"Ever heard of an emergency text-based comm?"

"But you promised! I trusted you."

"You really think I'm gonna keep a promise to watch my little brother die and not do anything about it? Don't you know what you mean to me?"

Of course I do. So maybe I should say so. I might not get another chance. "You love me," I state, bemused. "I'll never understand this, first Vader, then Leia, now you. How can all of you love me after what I've done?"

He shrugs. "Love's not like that, Luke. It's deeper'n that. It doesn't just go away. And I wouldn't want it to."

"I love you, too," I whisper, taking his hand and holding it as I slip in and out of consciousness.

I'm awake enough to notice when the medds arrive and put me on a stretcher. Han's by my side in the skiff on the way over.

And then it's all darkness.


	25. Get Better

One more chapter after this one. Enjoy.

* * *

I'm a little surprised to wake up at all.

As I return to consciousness, I'm increasingly aware of the fact that I'm in a bed at MedCenter. It's familiar to me, the sounds of medds and meddroids hurrying around, calls coming over the announcer comm, the clicking of machines and hum of bacta tanks. I open my eyes to find everything stark and white, and the fact I'm in a private room this time means they expect me to be here for awhile.

I know better than to sit up. That's something you learn once, the hard way, and never try again–do not sit up upon waking after a drug overdose, because your head will pound so badly that you'll wish you were dead instead. Besides, the achiness throughout the rest of my body is more than enough.

Eyes wide, trying to relax on my pillow because it will make things easier in the long run, I look around. I'm hooked up to more than one machine, a tiny heart rate monitor on my left wrist beeping as my veins pulse, a tube connecting my arm to an IV, probably to keep me hydrated and to attempt to get my weight up, the latter of which never works. I sigh, wondering how long I'll be here and what I'm supposed to do now. My talk with Han is still fresh in my mind, a little hazy from the drugs but there, and it has changed everything for me. It hasn't given me a single answer, and instead has raised more questions...but what he said, about love, maybe that could give me a little hope.

I sigh again, straining my ears to hear the sound of a business-like female voice speaking with a low and concerned male voice outside my room. I can't make out any of it, but the man sounds like Han...and feels like Han, too. He's watching out for me, I think with a small smile.

The door opens, and in walks a medd aid who I remember from the other times I've been here, a heavy human woman in her late forties, outspoken and nosey, I remember with annoyance. "Good to see you _again_, Mister Skywalker," she says with ironic cheerfulness. I can see Han over her shoulder looking very relieved to see me awake.

I don't answer the medd. Instead, I ask, "How long was I out?"

Looking at a data pad, she answers, "Oh, about seventeen hours, this time. That's a record for you–you're usually out the door as soon as you're anywhere near stabilized. You really outdid yourself this time, though. There was about half an hour there that we didn't think you'd make it."

Though that was what I had planned on, the thought frightens me, partly out of fear for my own well-being, partly because I put Han through that. "Am I going to be okay?"

"You'll live. I'd really start worrying about what this is doing to your body, though. We can only regenerate your liver so far." She shakes her head. "I really think we should start turning you down when you come here because of drugs. Enough is enough." She sets a datapad on my bedside table. "Sign it this time, Mister Skywalker. Do yourself a favor."

I shake my head, jaw set in defiance. "No. No, I'm not going."

She sighs in resignation. "Okay. But just in case you change your mind..."

She leaves, and Han meets my eyes from the doorway. He looks tired and messy, and he's probably been up all night and all day. He closes the door behind himself and sits in a chair by my bedside. I reach hesitantly for his hand, which he gives. "I'm glad you're here," I say softly after a long moment.

He half smiles that crooked grin and says, "They couldn't _keep_ me away, junior."

I manage a smile in return.

"You had me scared there, for awhile. It took them a long time to stabilize you and even after that, they didn't know if you'd wake up...but you did. How you feel?"

"You don't want to know." I see the fatigue in his eyes and feel responsible, so I say, "Gods, Han...I'm sorry."

"Yeah...so'm I."

I blink. "For what?"

He shrugs. "Everything."

"None of this is your fault...that's why I can talk to you." Easier than I have ever been able to talk to anybody. Maybe if I had talked to Han back when I learned everything, maybe I could have put it into perspective, dealt with it better. I'm not sure how much better he could have made things, but anything would be better than what I've become. I purposely overdosed on painkillers, spice and alcohol, for hell's sake–I, Luke Skywalker, pure angelic farmboy turned Jedi, a boy who once believed fairy tales as fact and thought that love could conquer all. But maybe it could still conquer some things. Like this old grudge, for example. "Han...I don't want there to be any hard feelings between us anymore."

"Me, neither."

It's like a weight has been lifted off my chest. "Then...I guess there aren't."

"'Course not." A brilliant smile spreads on his face, and I ask with a confused look to explain it. "I'm a father," he announces.

The baby? Leia... Something in me brightens, and I say, "When?"

"This morning. She went into labor last night while I was at your place, and I didn't even tell her what was going on. I think she knew somehow. Between the two of you, I was up all night." He doesn't sound bothered by it at all.

"How are they," I ask, letting myself feel concern and love for them, because what else do I have, now? "Leia and the baby?"

"Fine." His smile grows once more, and I think I might be seeing a younger Han, a Han who was never touched by the hardships of the Galaxy. "Damn, kid–why didn't you _tell_ me it felt like this?"

I smile weakly in return, but had I the energy it would be the sort of bright smile I only get when thinking of Ben and Anikin. "Fatherhood? Isn't it incredible?"

He nods, still smiling boyishly as Han could.

I remember Ben's birth, how scared and awed I was, how I thought I might die of nervousness. But it was all worth it when I held him in my arms for the first time and looked into his dark eyes. I showed him off to Han soon afterwards. "I'm a father, Han," I'd said proudly, my voice trembling with emotions unfathomable to an eighteen-year-old farmboy. "This is Ben Skywalker."

"What's her name?" I ask, surprised at my own excitement.

"Mylia Solo," Han replies, obviously as proud as can be. "She's gorgeous."

"And you and Leia," I begin carefully, not sure if I should be asking. "Are you okay?"

He hesitates, looking deep into my eyes with that soft look in his, his smile fading. "Yeah. I mean, I think I'll always love her, you know? And I'm gonna be around for the baby–we're still raising her together. And you and Leia and the kids are the only family I got besides Chewie's anyway, so...me and her will always be friends, I think."

It wasn't the answer I was hoping for. I want Han to tell me that my existence has not hurt his life in any way, that he and Leia will live happily ever after. It would give me stability, something to hold onto if I am to be a part of this family. I used to want Han to suffer for hurting me, but he and Leia suffering though a divorce no longer seems fitting. Partly because Han seems to think it will make a difference in my life. I shake my head. "Han, don't do this because of me. Leia and I can't be together–"

"Why not?" he asks evenly.

I can't believe what I'm hearing. I almost sit up, then I remember my condition. "You _know_ why not!"

"Yeah...but think about it. No one knows, and it's nothing that hasn't happened before–I mean, you have kids together. And it'll make you both happy, and then you can be with her and the boys. Who would you be hurting?"

I open my mouth to protest.

Han cuts me off. "Yeah, okay. Me. A little. But I'll deal with it, 'cause we're broke up no matter what. Fate played a fucking horrible trick on you both, and I say, don't let it mess with you anymore. You two were perfect together–there's no reason you shouldn't be again."

Again, I have to resist the urge to sit up. "There is a _very_ good reason! Han, even if no one else knew, even if we weren't hurting anyone...she and I would still know. I couldn't live like that. Part of me wants to, and it probably always will...but I can't. I just can't."

My eyes grow wider with wonder when I realize what I just said. I was handed Leia, a life spent in love and happiness with her and our children, on a silver platter, and I turned it down. I passed the test. I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding, and shut my eyes in relief. Maybe I'm not sick. "I just can't," I repeat, just to hear myself say it.

He nods, clearly a bit relieved. "That's up to you–both of you. But I'll always be here for you two no matter what. You got that, kid? I'm not gonna judge you."

I smile and squeeze his hand. "Thank you. You don't know what it's like to be alone with all of these thoughts and feelings..."

"No, but I see what it does to you. And I can see the kid I used to know in your eyes, even when you're high or depressed. He's still there, and you can get him back. Me and Leia are gonna help you."

"What if I don't want him back?" I growl.

He raises an eyebrow. "You're just scared, Luke. You got nothing to be scared of."

"Anikin..."

"_Anikin's fine_. He's the last thing you gotta be scared of."

I like to hear that. I think I need it drummed into my head again and again until I think it's okay to believe it–because it's what I want to believe with all my heart. But what _about_ Anikin... "Han–do the boys know about me? Why I'm here?"

He nods. "Yeah. I sat them down today and explained the whole thing."

I panic. "What'd you _say_!"

"That you were really sick 'cause of spice and it might take you awhile to get better."

I nod. That's not so bad. After all, he's a good father, contrary to all predictions I would have made. And it makes things easier to be open about it. "And what did they think?"

"They just want you to get better. We all do."

My eyes drift to the datapad. I must be out of my mind with withdrawal, because I actually consider it. If I get better, I can spend time with my boys, and try to work things out with Leia, and be the friend Han wants me to be, the friend he deserves. It's what I've wanted to want all along, but I didn't dare. I was afraid of getting hurt and hurting them. I couldn't do it.

No. I shake my head. I still can't. I can't... I want spice so badly, to chase away the fear, but there's no way I'm getting it here, so I instead I take deep breaths and stick it out. There's no other choice.

But I think of Anikin's blue eyes, staring up at me in misdirected wonder and admiration. I don't want it to be misdirected...

"Han, could you hand me that datapad? The one on the table?"

He picks it up and looks at it. "What is it?"

"A form I have to sign to consent to going into rehab. Every time I'm in here, they ask me to sign it and I always say no."

His eyes light up hopefully, but the rest of his face shows that he's still wary. "Are you gonna, this time?"

I take a deep breath, and nod.


	26. Epilogue

My loyal readers: This is the last post. Thank you so much for your ongoing support in this controversial and trying endeavor. I appreciate it, and I never could have done it without you. I have now finished my first novella. Cherish it as I have. –the Author

* * *

I have to talk to Leia about this. About everything. I just have to know what's going to happen now. 

I wait until MeddCenter is almost silent in the middle of the night, then I get up, pulling the IV from my arm. Han told me where her room is–he understands. He just told me to take it easy, and not to go if the medds said I couldn't. Well, I didn't ask the medds, so they didn't say no, did they? I appreciate his concern, but this is important. I'm being careful. My head pounds, but not as badly as this morning. I'm shaking and cold despite my thick white patient's robes, and the floor is freezing on my bare feet. Maybe I _should_ wait until tomorrow...but I can't. I _need_ to talk to her, and it's by will alone that I slip past the night staff to the turbolift. Maybe there are some things about the Force that are helpful.

I find her room and slip in quietly incase she's asleep–and she is, soundly, in a white nightgown in a white bed in a white room, reminding me of a certain sleeping princess I discovered long ago on the first Death Star. Beautiful.

I gaze on her for a moment, confused but happy. I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this love, but I'll figure it out. We both will, I think.

I almost go to gently wake her up, but a white bassinet on the opposite wall catches my eye. Little Mylia. I pad softly across the room and peer into the cradle wherein sleeps a tiny, chubby, dark-haired girl, clad in white like her mother, hands clenched into fists in sleep. When I see her, my spirit warms and I can't help but smile. There's no rule against loving her, even though she's Han's and not mine. After all, we're all a family, right? All six of us.

Leia's breathing changes, causing me to look in her direction. She opens those amazing brown eyes, and smiles sleepily. "Luke?"

I smile in return. "Yeah." I regard the baby again, sighing in awe. "She's beautiful, Leia."

"Doesn't she look just like Ben?"

I nod.

Looking me over in concern, she finally asks, "Are you...are you all right?"

Drawing a deep breath, I nod again. "I think so. I mean..." I laugh tiredly. "I feel terrible. But I'm alive–and, um..." I move a chair to her bedside and sit carefully. "I'm going into rehab," I say carefully, not meeting her eyes.

She sighs with relief and shuts her eyes for a moment. "Good. I'm proud of you, Luke. I know it's hard."

_You have no idea._ "I'm doing it for the boys, you know. I...I want to be back in their lives, if there's any way you'll trust me. I need them–it's the only way I'm gonna get better." I meet her eyes. "And I need you."

We stare into each other's eyes for a long moment, and it's been forever since I've felt this close to anyone. Our hands meet one another halfway, twining our fingers together and squeezing as if our lives depend on it. I shut my eyes, holding it all in. I'll figure it out, I repeat to myself.

"I've been thinking, Leia," I begin softly, "Han seems to think that we could just go back to the way things were...when we were married. And...I know he means well. He just wants us to be happy, and he's actually trying to be helpful, and he is, but... I could never do that."

"Neither could I," she whispers weakly.

"I think he's onto something, though," I say more brightly. "He said we're perfect together. He's right about that."

She shrugs. "Luke, what's going to happen now? I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this...this love that..."

I feel my eyes grow wider. Weren't those my own words? Han's right.

"I know, I know." I try to sound reassuring. "Neither do I. I mean, I'd like to be around, if you can put up with me. I'm going to try, Leia. Really I am. I'll be in rehab for awhile, and..."

"And you should probably get therapy..."

I clench my teeth. That's the last thing I want. But if Leia's asking me... "I will. For the boys, and for you. I'll _always_ love you, Leia. I'm not going to pretend anymore." I finish huskily, the words catching in my throat.

She smiles softly, squeezing my hand. "I...I'll always love you, too."

I smile wistfully in return. "I don't quite understand why, but I think that's what made me hold on when they weren't sure if I was going to make it. And what brought me down here. And what made me sign the rehab consent form. It makes it easier, knowing I'm not alone. Maybe if we're trying to figure this out together, we actually will."

She nods. "I know what you mean. I used to think...but I'm glad I'm not alone."

I move to her bed and lay down, telling myself it's only for a second because I'm so weak. We lay looking into each other's eyes and holding hands and nothing more for a long moment. I don't touch her, don't snuggle up to her, and I'm surprised at how comfortable this is for me. I don't feel aroused, I don't feel nauseous–it's just peaceful. Amazing. Perfect.

Her hair's messy, but that's to be expected–she's had quite a day. I smooth a stray strand away from her eyes, smiling. So perfect. Of course. "Maybe someday," I say, voice shaking. How hadn't I known that it could be this simple? "Maybes someday the love we feel could turn into..." Just say it. It's time you finally said it. "Maybe it could turn into the love we should have. The love that...a brother and sister should feel."

Those brown eyes go wide and she flushes slightly. "I've never heard you actually say it before. Use those words, I mean...brother and sister." She seems to have a little trouble saying it as well.

"I know," I say, relieved that it's out now. "I'm not sure I ever really thought it outright, either. I beat around the bush about it even in my own head. It's time I stopped."

"Me, too," she whispers fondly.

We relax into one another's eyes once more, and I'm happier than I've been in I don't know how long. I realize that I've found the key–love. Darkness can come from love, too, I suppose, the way love turns to hate in extreme circumstances. But it brought me back, as it had my father. I'll be a long time healing, I know that. But I'm ready to try.

"Love's all we really have," I murmur to myself. Maybe I know what he meant, now. "That's what we needed all along, I think. Not to stop feeling it, just...accept it."

She furrows her brow, but she smiles. "You _just_ figured that out?"

I blush slightly, smiling. She can still make me feel like a naive farmboy. I touch her cheek softly, and she scoots into my arms. I hold her tightly. It will take time, of course–it's not as if we'll become siblings over night, but time is something we have. It will happen. After all, where else could we go, now? There's nowhere but onward, and I have to be brave. Leia will help me–she's my hope.

I start to drift off into a much-needed sleep, but I remember where I am, and where I'm supposed to be, and I snap back awake. I draw away. "I should go back to my room," I say apologetically. I'd rather stay here, because she makes me feel safe and warm, but we have to take things one step at a time. Besides, if the medds find I'm missing, they'll think I ran away to get spice, and I don't want to explain what's really happening.

"I'll come to see you tomorrow, before I leave," Leia says.

Something to look forward to. That's new. "With Han and the boys?"

"If you want."

I nod.

"Do you know how long you're going to be here?" she asks.

"They said a week, just to make sure," I say wearily. It sure sounds like fun. "Then I'm going to the clinic. I might be there for a few months..."

"I'll come to see you all the time."

"You're so busy, though..."

"I'll make time."

I smile hesitantly. "That...would mean a lot to me."

"Do you need anything from your apartment?"

Thinking of my box of spice sticks, I shake my head. "There's nothing there that means anything to me, now. I don't think I'm ever going back there." I shrug helplessly. "Not sure where I'm going to live, though, when I get out of rehab. Maybe I could get a place closer to the palace–"

"You could have my guestroom, if you want," she offers suddenly.

I blink up in surprise. "You don't want me to live with you, Leia. I'm too fucked up–"

She smiles fondly. "Well, you're going to have to stop talking like that, and it's only if you get better...but it will help you. You know it will. And you can care for the children while I'm working. Han's always gone on missions, and it will be nice for the boys to have their father instead of a nanny-droid. They'll love it."

I smile wryly, intentionally calling her by the sometime title that had once turned into a pet-name, "What about you, princess?"

Her smile grows, but she doesn't answer. She doesn't need to. "I'm serious, Luke. We'll take care of you. If that's what you want."

In Leia's apartment, it's all light and love and beauty. And I've grown tired of the shadows. Though I still doubt whether I'll be ready to live with Leia within the last few months, who knows what will happen to me at the clinic? Who knows what will happen to me with Han, Ben, and Anikin there to keep me safe and loved, the growing baby to inspire me, and Leia to give me hope?

Leia looks at me expectantly. She needs an answer.

At last, I nod. "I'd like that."

–The End–


End file.
